"Darren Wilson is not the first gang member to be publicly accused of a crime he did not commit. But Darren Wilson was given the kind of due process that those of us who are often presumed to be gang members rarely enjoy."

"Maybe this is a good episode of ScandalI’m not the guy to ask."

"When was the last time anyone sidled up to you and whispered into your ear that such and such a person is a Presbyterian?"

"Despite my claims that Iran’s leaders are messianic lunatics, Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal remains in its warehouses."

"It’s easy for any social movement to demonize its adversaries — or, even worse, to ignore them. It’s harder to acknowledge an adversary’s brilliance, and a great deal more useful to learn from it."

"Trying to build Galt’s Gulch, he ended up reconstructing Hobbes’s Leviathan."

"Do I believe in the historicity of a floating zoo? Yes I do. Do I hold to the specific details of that historic event with the same 'lay my life on the line' conviction as I do the historical death on a cross and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth? No, I do not."

"Doyle does not portray genius in the say-that-again-in-English way."

"If we’ve taught our students for 12 years that there is no fact of the matter as to whether cheating is wrong, we can’t very well blame them for doing so later on."

"Though Manuzio invented the comma in order to separate parts of a sentence, it can tie words together as efficiently as it keeps them apart."

“That’s one of the miracles of our Lord, rhyming ‘illness’ and ‘village.’

Steve Thorngate

The Century managing editor is also a church musician and songwriter.

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