"We hear nature abhorring a vacuum, and I think that there are places in human character that long for transcendental explanations, that it’s not all meaningless. In fact, there’s a larger purpose, and I think it’s not a coincidence that such a significant part of resistance to communist regimes has in part come from, on the one hand, religious believers, and on the other hand, from disillusioned true believers in communism who find themselves undergoing an internal experience of revulsion, finding that their ideals have not been followed through on."

"Well, you mentioned in the context of the claims of science, humility as a crucial attribute. I think that humility, sobriety, realism are tremendously valuable in trying to understand another society, another form of government. And so, I think one needs to be very self-aware that projection onto others of what we think they’re about is no substitute for actual study of the sources that a society like that produces. It’s declarations of what matters most to them, the leadership’s own pronouncements about what the future holds. I think that matters a lot more than pious hopes or versions of being convinced that inevitably everyone will come to resemble us in a better future."

"Marx had been a student of Hegel. And Hegel as a German idealist philosopher had announced very definitively that history has a purpose. History is not a collection of random facts. And as an idealist, he proposed that the true movement of history, the true meaning of history, what made history, history with a capital H, something that’s transcendent and meaningful was that it was the working out of an idea through different civilizations, different stages of historical development. And that idea was the idea of human freedom. So it was not individuals or great thinkers alone making history and having an impact. It was the idea itself striving to come to fruition, striving to come to an evermore perfect realization."