The morality of compromise' sounds contradictory. Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat. Strong men don't compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised. I shall argue that strong men, conversely, know when to compromise and that all principles can be compromised to serve a greater principle.

Competition is healthy ... but there is more to life than winning or we should nearly all be losers

Villages are small and personal, and their inhabitants have names, characters, and personalities. What more appropriate concept on which to base our institutions of the future than the ancient social unit whose flexibility and strength substained human society through millenia?

There is as far as I know, no example in history, of any state voluntarily ceding power from the centre to its constituent parts.

Citizenship is the chance to make a difference to the place where you belong.

I like less the story that a frog if put in cold water will not bestir itself if that water is heated up slowly and gradually and will in the end let itself be killed, boiled alive, too comfortable with continuity to realize that continuous change at some point may become intolerable and demand a change in behaviour.

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