The defiance of established authority, religious and secular, social and political, as a world-wide phenomenon may well one day be accounted the outstanding event of the last decade

At a time when we see around the world the violent consequences of the assumptions of religious authority by government, Americans may count themselves fortunate. Our regard for constitutional boundaries has protected us from similar travails while allowing private religious exercise to flourish. Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must answer a difficult question: Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?

To be free in an age like ours, one must be in a position of authority. That in itself would be enough to make me ambitious.

There is no stopping the world's tendency to throw off imposed restraints, the religious authority that is based on the ignorance of the many, the political authority that is based on the knowledge of the few

He seemed evidently more fond of controversy than of truth, and the whole turn of his conversation indicated that he derived his religious security rather from the adoption of a party, than from the implantation of a new principle.

In May this year, India, in defiance of world opinion, went ahead with its nuclear tests, ... After the peace and stability in the South Asian region had been undermined, Pakistan also carried out nuclear tests.