Our belief in salvation through the market is very much in the Utopian tradition. The economists and managers are the servants of God. Like the medieval scholastics, their only job is to uncover the divine plan. They could never create or stop it. At most they might aspire to small alterations.

The Unconscious Civilisation There is a certain terrifying dignity to the big ideologies. With the stroke of an intellectual argument the planet is put in its place. Only the bravest or the most foolish of individuals would not become passive before such awe inspiring destinies.

The best defence [for a democracy, for the public good] is aggressiveness, the aggressiveness of the involved citizen. We need to reassert that slow, time-consuming, inefficient, boring process that requires our involvement; it is called 'being a citizen.' The public good is not something that you can see. It is not static. It is a process. It is the process by which democratic civilizations build themselves.

In a society of ideological believers, nothing is more ridiculous than the individual who doubts and does not conform.

The void in our society has been produced by the absence of values... we have no widespread belief in the value of participation. The rational system has made us fear standing out in any serious way.

If allowed to run free of the social system, capitalism will attempt to corrupt and undermine democracy, which is after all not a natural state.

As an inclusive quality, imagination is thus our primary force for progress, whatever progress is.