Religions are always in trouble,” Tabari said. “In adversity they grow honest. It’s good for them. - James A. Michener

And in this way the Ukrainian cossack Trofim Zhdanko acquired a ship he wanted, a wife he admired and a son he abhorred.

I am a humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create reasonably decent societies. I think that young people who want to understand the world can profit from the works of Plato and Socrates, the behaviour of the three Thomases, Aquinas, More and Jefferson — the austere analyses of Immanuel Kant and the political leadership of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.

The chance emergence of the was nothing. Remember this. But its persistence and patient accumulation of stature were everything. Only by relentless effort did it establish its right to exist.