I think one of the very frightening things about the regime of the National Socialists is that it made people happy.

It would no doubt be very sentimental to argue - but I would argue it nevertheless - that the peculiar combination of joy and sadness in bell music - both of clock chimes, and of change-ringing - is very typical of England. It is of a piece with the irony in which English people habitually address one another.

We tell ourselves that God is dead, when what we mean is that God is Dad, and we wish him dead.

IQ in general has improved since tests first began. Psychologists think that this is because modern life becomes ever more complicated.

We cannot hope for a society in which formal organized religion dies out. But we can stop behaving as if it was worthy of our collective respect.

I had lost faith in biography.

Anti-Semitism is extremely common.