Much can and must be done by governments, but they cannot of themselves change lives.

Governments cannot make marriages or turn feckless individuals into responsible citizens. That needs another kind of change agent.

The emphasis has been on rights, not responsibilities. When it comes to piecing together the fragments of broken lives, we have tended to place the entire burden on the state and its agencies.

Cyberspace can't compensate for real space. We benefit from chatting to people face to face.

Marriage, sanctified by the bond of fidelity, is the nearest life gets to a work of art.

The faith religious believers have in God is small compared to the faith people put in politicians, knowing how many times they have been disappointed in the past but still insisting that this time it will be different.

When everything that matters can be bought and sold, when commitments can be broken because they are no longer to our advantage, when shopping becomes salvation and advertising slogans become our litany, when our worth is measured by how much we earn and spend, then the market is destroying the very virtues on which in the long run it depends.