"Yet, it ought to be obvious that good music generally occupies a higher plane that mere politics. Great writers can express moods through melody and capture experiences we share most powerfully - love, lust, longing joy, rage, fear triumph, yearning and confusion."

"The business of peace requires more than showing up with paint brushes, foodstuffs and an oil pipeline or two."

"The secret of learning to be sick is this: Illness doesn't make you less of what you were. You are still you."

"That said, ID does not qualify as science because it gives us nothing to test or measure. Science requires replicable tests involving measurable variables."

"Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it."

"Those religions that are oppressive to women are also against democracy, human rights, and freedom of expression."

"I meant that the Chinese people are not aware of their own entrapment. They believe they live in a free society, but don't realize how much they are being monitored and controlled, how much the information they receive is restricted and warped, until they step out of line, that is, and feel the heavy hand of the state fall on them."

"The Cuban people still live in constant fear of a brutal totalitarian regime that has demonstrated time and again its utter disregard for basic human dignity. The fight for a free Cuba has gone on for far too long."