I Vote And I Do Jury Duty.

The Discovery There Is No God Is A Great Relief, Because If There Were, It Would Be Like Living In A Celestial North Korea If There Was One. You Would Never Be Able To Escape.

In An Average Day, You May Well Be Confronted With Some Species Of Bullying Or Bigotry, Or Some Ill-phrased Appeal To The General Will, Or Some Petty Abuse Of Authority. If You Have A Political Loyalty, You May Be Offered A Shady Reason For Agreeing To A Lie Or A Half-truth That Serves Some Short-term Purpose. Everybody Devises Tactics For Getting Through Such Moments; Try Behaving "as If" They Need Not Be Tolerated And Are Not Inevitable.

Those Of Us Who Write And Study History Are Accustomed To Its Approximations And Ambiguities. This Is Why We Do Not Take Literally The Tenth-hand Reports Of Frightened And Illiterate Peasants Who Claim To Have Seen Miracles Or To Have Had Encounters With Messiahs And Prophets And Redeemers Who Were, Like Them, Mere Humans. And This Is Also Why We Will Never Submit To Dictation From Those Who Display A Fanatical Belief In Certainty And Revelation.

I've Proved To Be As Difficult To Convert As I Am To Hypnotize.

I Still Make Sure To Go, At Least Once Every Year, To A Country Where Things Cannot Be Taken For Granted, And Where There Is Either Too Much Law And Order Or Too Little.