Skepticism has never founded empires established principals or changed the world's heart. The great doers in history have always been people of faith.

To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning.

May it not be that just as we have to have faith in Him God has to have faith in us and considering the history of the human race so far may it not be that 'faith' is even more difficult for Him than it is for us?

Religion is part of the human make-up. It's also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature the texts our first attempt at cosmology making sense of where we are in the universe our first attempt at health care believing in faith healing our first attempt at philosophy.

Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history therefore we must be saved by faith.

A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.

I rise today to offer a formal and heartfelt apology to all the victims of lynching in our history and for the failure of the United States Senate to take action when action was most needed.

We have actually experienced in recent months a dramatic demonstration of an unprecedented intelligence failure perhaps the most significant intelligence failure in the history of the United States.

My story of success and failure is not just about music and being famous. It's about living and loving and trying to find purpose in this crazy world.

You have to look at the history of the Middle East in particular. It has been one of failure and frustration of feudalism and tribalism.

And in reality I don't think it's a real documentary. It's more a story of her life. It's a story of survival. It's a story of the time in which she lived. The story of success and failure.

No student of Chinese history can say that the Chinese are incapable of religious experience even when judged by the standards of medieval Europe or pious India.

When you go visiting countries you start reading the history of the place and you start getting into the culture and then you have to leave. In my experience all countries have hidden treasures.

Literature overtakes history for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.

At an incredibly divisive point in pop history Donna Summer managed to create an undeniable across-the-board experience of mass pleasure - after 'Bad Girls ' nobody ever tried claiming disco sucked again. It set the template for what Michael Jackson would do a few months later with 'Off The Wall.'

When I'm writing I'm trying to immerse myself in the chaos of an emotional experience rather than separate myself from it and look back at it from a distance with clarity and tell it as a story. Because that's how life is lived you know?

Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer's own life.

No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.

Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel anything you read all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.

Everybody's got one killer story. It doesn't take talent to tell that story it just takes experience.

No matter how close to personal experience a story might be inevitably you are going to get to a part that isn't yours and actually whether it happened or not becomes irrelevant. It is all about choosing the right words.

The science of politics is the one science that is deposited by the streams of history like the grains of gold in the sand of a river and the knowledge of the past the record of truths revealed by experience is eminently practical as an instrument of action and a power that goes to making the future.

In my books I never portray violence as a reasonable solution to a problem. If the lead characters in the story are driven to it it's at the extreme end of their experience.

Given that religious faith is an intrinsic element of human experience it is best to approach and engage the subject with a sense of history and a critical sensibility.