I continue to do something I've done since I was 18, and that is read a chapter of Proverbs every day as part of my daily devotion. I still maintain that.

Elimination of illiteracy is as serious an issue to our history as the abolition of slavery.

I have seen how the fear of becoming subject to God's revenge and punishment has paralyzed the mental and emotional lives of many people, independently of their age, religion, or life-style. This paralyzing fear of God is one of the great human tragedies.

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee, as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.

The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon's, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe.

To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.

Young adults enrolled in universities and colleges or other postsecondary training should avail themselves of the opportunity to take institute of religion courses or, if attending a Church school, should take at least one religion course every term.

School, I never truly got the knack of. I could never focus on things I didn't want to learn.

Science is an integral part of culture. It's not this foreign thing, done by an arcane priesthood. It's one of the glories of the human intellectual tradition.

A folktale without a moral is merely a whimsy.

To fear the Lord is to be overwhelmed with wonder before the greatness of God and his love.