Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.

A good half of the art of living is resilience.

Forcing people to eat together is an effective way to promote tolerance.

Let's say you went to Harvard or Oxford or Cambridge, and you said, 'I've come here because I'm in search of morality, guidance and consolation; I want to know how to live,' - they would show you the way to the insane asylum.

We should keep a careful diary of our moments of envy: they are our covert guides to what we should try to do next.

At the beginning of human history, as we struggled to light fires and to chisel fallen trees into rudimentary canoes, who could have predicted that long after we had managed to send men to the moon and areoplanes to Australasia, we would still have such trouble knowing how to tolerate ourselves, forgive our loved ones, and apologise for our tantrums?

Politics is so difficult, it's generally only people who aren't quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.