It's a Little Leaguers game that major leaguers play extraordinarily well, a game that excites us throughout adulthood. The crack of the bat and the scent of the horsehide on leather bring back our own memories that have been washed away with the sweat and tears of summers long gone...even as the setting sun pushes the shadows past home plate.

In the end, I'm convinced we will all benefit if suspicion is replaced by discussion, innuendo by dialogue; if the emphasis in our debate turns from a search for talismanic criteria and neat but simplistic answers to an honest - more intelligent - attempt at describing the role religion has in our public affairs, and the limits placed on that role.

I have heard the critics. What they are spewing are lies, nothing more. My defense policy calls for an efficient and strong military for our country. We live in dangerous times, but we must remember that we have to defend the United States against dangerous and modern threats. The Cold War is ending. Defense hawks like Senator Nunn need to understand this.

The problems of a retired schoolteacher in Duluth are OUR problems. That the future of the child in Buffalo is OUR future. That the struggle of a disabled man in Boston to survive and live decently is OUR struggle. That The hunger of a woman in Little Rock is OUR hunger. That the failure anywhere to provide what reasonably we might to avoid pain is OUR failure.

The American people need no course in philosophy or political science or church history to know that God should not be made into a celestial party chairman. To most of us, the manipulative invoking of religion to advance a politician or a party is frightening and divisive. The American people will tolerate religious leaders taking positions for or against candidates.

There are some who ask us to believe that if we want the best of times for ourselves, the fit and the fortunate, then we'll just have to learn to live with the worst of times for millions of other Americans - that we're doomed to be a nation of the lucky and the left-out. I don't believe it. My mother didn't believe it. Your ancestors didn't believe it. And I don't think you should believe it.

Wes Clark is a man of whom you can ask a question, and he will look you directly in the eye, and give you the most truthful and complete answer you can imagine. You will know the absolute truth of the statement as well as the thought process behind the answer. You will have no doubt as to the intellect of the speaker and meaning of the answer to this question....So you can see, as a politician, he has a lot to learn.

Way down deep the American people are afraid of an entangling relationship between formal religions - or whole bodies of religious belief - and government. Apart from constitutional law and religious doctrine, there is a sense that tells us it's wrong to presume to speak for God or to claim God's sanction of our particular legislation and his rejection of all other positions. Most of us are offended when we see religion being trivialized by its appearance in political throw-away pamphlets.

It's an old story; it's as old as our history. The difference between Democrats and Republicans has always been measured in courage and confidence. The Republicans believe that the wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some of the old, some of the young, some of the weak, are left behind by the side of the trail. The strong, the strong they tell us, will inherit the land. We Democrats believe in something else. We Democrats believe that we can make it all the way with the whole family intact, and we have more than once.

Either kill me or take me as I am, because I'll be damned if I ever change.

My manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved. Do you suppose I care? A poor fool indeed is he who adopts a manner of thinking for others!

It is only by way of pain one arrives at pleasure

Fuck! Is one expected to be a gentleman when one is stiff?

In order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice.

We are no guiltier in following the primative impulses that govern us than is the Nile for her floods or the sea for her waves.

Sexual pleasure is, I agree, a passion to which all others are subordinate but in which they all unite.

What does one want when one is engaged in the sexual act? That everything around you give you its utter attention, think only of you, care only for you...every man wants to be a tyrant when he fornicates.

To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell.

Certain souls may seem harsh to others, but it is just a way, beknownst only to them, of caring and feeling more deeply.

There is no God, Nature sufficeth unto herself; in no wise hath she need of an author.

Lust is to the other passions what the nervous fluid is to life; it supports them all, lends strength to them all ambition, cruelty, avarice, revenge, are all founded on lust.

If it is the dirty element that gives pleasure to the act of lust, then the dirtier it is, the more pleasurable it is bound to be.

All universal moral principles are idle fancies.

Your body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced.

Sex without pain is like food without taste

Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain

The man who alters his way of thinking to suit others is a fool.

Sex'' is as important as eating or drinking and we ought to allow the one appetite to be satisfied with as little restraint or false modesty as the other

I want to be the victim of his errors.

The only way to a woman's heart is along the path of torment.

What we are doing here is only the image of what we would like to do.

It is not my mode of thought that has caused my misfortunes, but the mode of thought of others.

I don't know what the heart is, not I: I only use the word to denote the mind's frailties.

The reasoning man who scorns the prejudices of simpletons necessarily becomes the enemy of simpletons; he must expect as much, and laugh at the inevitable.

Religions are the cradles of despotism.

My passions, concentrated on a single point, resemble the rays of a sun assembled by a magnifying glass: they immediately set fire to whatever object they find in their way.

True happiness lies in the senses, and virtue gratifies none of them.

One must do violence to the object of one's desire; when it surrenders, the pleasure is greater.

Can we become other than what we are?

Destruction, hence, like creation, is one of Nature's mandates.

Love Is Stronger Than Pride

I've already told you: the only way to a woman's heart is along the path of torment. I know none other as sure.

Let us give ourselves indiscriminately to everything our passions suggest, and we will always be happy…Conscience is not the voice of Nature but only the voice of prejudice.

Happiness is an abstraction, it is a product of the imagination, it is a way of being moved, which depends entirely on our way of seeing and feeling.

It is always by way of pain one arrives at pleasure.

Nature has endowed each of us with a capacity for kindly feelings: let us not squander them on others.

In order to know virtue, we must acquaint ourselves with vice. Only then can we know the true measure of a man.

The completest submissiveness is your lot, and that is all;

Were he supreme, were he mighty, were he just, were he good, this God you tell me about, would it be through enigmas and buffooneries he would wish to teach me to serve and know him?

I assumed that everything must yield to me, that the entire universe had to flatter my whims, and that I had the right to satisfy them at will.