How can the unknown merit reverence? In other words how can you revere that of which you are ignorant? At the same time, it would be ridiculous to propose that what we know merits reverence. What we know merits any one of a number of things, but it stands to reason reverence isn't one of them. In other words, apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?

There's a tradition in British intellectual life of mocking any non-political force that gets involved in politics, especially within the sphere of the arts and the theatre.

The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you remember, or pretend you remember.

One is and is not in the centre of the maelstrom of it all.

Nothing is more sterile or lamentable than the man content to live within himself.

I think it is the responsibility of a citizen of any country to say what he thinks.

While The United States is the most powerful nation the world has ever seen, it is also the most detested nation that the world has ever known.