Dover's cliffs call to mind the Roman invasion; the Battle of Britain; our proximity to, yet difference from, mainland Europe; and international trade and exploration, both fair and exploitative.

The optimist underestimates how difficult it is to achieve real change, believing that anything is possible and it's possible now. Only by confronting head-on the reality that all progress is going to be obstructed by vested interests and corrupted by human venality can we create realistic programmes that actually have a chance of success.

People seem very arrogant when they say 'I'm right and you're wrong', but in practice we all believe we're right. We have a staggering arrogance in our own belief. That can be tempered by not being 100% certain; by being provisional. No matter what the debate is, very few people have the modesty to suspend judgement on a whole range of things; most intelligent people have an opinion and are expected to have an opinion by other people - but it always requires making a personal judgement that goes way-beyond your expertise. We do it all the time.

"That which does not kill me makes me stronger" is not a law of the universe. What it can be, if we so choose, is a resolution.

Untested assumptions and lazy habits of thought can be shown up, once put in a spotlight of a different hue.

Talking about creating truth tends to alarm people, because truth is meant to be 'just out there'. It doesn't take much thinking to appreciate that we sometimes change truths on the ground - sometimes just by words. A new law will change what is possible. I think - perhaps because the paradigm we follow tends to be scientific, and all about discovery - the creative element of truth is one upon which we don't focus so much attention. This is particularly so in anglophone philosophy, perhaps because we associate it too much with those 'pernicious' continental trends.

One reason why it has become harder to promote the beneficial side of emotions such as anger is that the moral vocabulary of good and bad has been replaced by the self-help lexicon of positive and negative thinking.