As crucial as religion has been and is to the life of the nation, America's unifying force has never been a specific faith, but a commitment to freedom - not least freedom of conscience.

In a spiritually sensitive culture, then, it might well be that age is something to be admired or envied.

We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.

Unlike a drop of water which loses its identity when it joins the ocean, man does not lose his being in the society in which he lives. Man's life is independent. He is born not for the development of the society alone, but for the development of his self.