the weight of my experience leads me to suspect that in my desire for a freer, saner, and more pleasurable way of life, I am not so different from mo… - Ellen Willis

"Someone was waving a large pink-and-white sign that read, "Don't Worry, Be Happy." I was trying, and so were at least thirty thousand other bodies, with varying degrees of post-Aquarian patience, to see the Who for the first time in a year."

I think it makes sense to look on violence as a tragic last resort, to ask of any violent act that it be necessary to prevent physical destruction or soul-destroying violation, and that it be directed as narrowly as possible to those most responsible for the conflict. I'm glad the French resistance used terror against the Germans-and I think our bombing of Dresden was a war crime. (“Ministries of Fear” November 1985)

If believers feel that their faith is trivialized and their true selves compromised by a society that will not give religious imperatives special weight, their problem is not that secularists are antidemocratic but that democracy is antiabsolutist.