I believe that a lot of our striving after the symbols and levers of success is due to a basic insecurity, a need to prove ourselves. That done, grown up at last, we are free to stop pretending.

Instead of a national curriculum for education, what is really needed is an individual curriculum for every child

Home is the first school for us all, a school with no fixed curriculum, no quality control, no examinations, no teacher training

We cannot wait for great visions from great people, for they are in short supply. It is up to us to light our own small fires in the darkness.

It is tempting to call for better leadership, but we probably expect too much from the leaders of the nations. Those nations are too big, the connections not strong enough, the commitment to the future not long enough. It is better to look smaller, to our now-smaller organisations, to local communities and cities, to families and clusters of friends, to small networks of portfolio people with time to give to something bigger than themselves. We have to fashion our own directions in our own places.

Ordinary citizens are so accepting of what is going on, grumbling when their material interests were affected, but seemingly accepting the spiritual poverty so characteristic of today.

The world by and large has to be reinvented.