"The frontier will nevertheless survive in the attitudes a few of us inherited from it. One of those attitudes--to me a beatitude--is the conviction that the past matters, that history weighs on us and refuses to be forgotten by us, and that the worst poverty women--or men--can suffer is to be bereft of their past."

"Heresy is usually quite sophisticated, actually has a meaning, and is to be taken very seriously. It is therefore to be carefully distinguished from turgid, pretentious, badly-written Bullsgeshichte, to use the technical German theological term."

"The best way to easily identify a counterfeit currency is to have a full exposure to the original currency. If you don't know your true vision, any satanic vision can cross your way and you might not know it."

"Just as we reject racism, sexism, ageism, and heterosexism, we reject speciesism. The species of a sentient being is no more reason to deny the protection of this basic right than race, sex, age, or sexual orientation is a reason to deny membership in the human moral community to other humans."

"The idea would be in my mind - and I know it sounds strange - is that the most important advances in medicine would be made not by new knowledge in molecular biology, because that's exceeding what we can even use. It'll be made by mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists, figuring out a way to get all that information together."

"You can't just constantly judge a situation or a person because of what you're used to or how they look. They might turn out to be this sweet man who asks you what your dreams are. You know?"