Too often, complaint is not about principled objection on moral grounds, but opportunistic objection on grounds of self-interest. To rectify this, we need to work on mastering the art of complaint.

For most people their ideal life involves an intimate relationship with another person; one which often has a sexual basis. But there's no logic about it; why shouldn't people choose to live together with someone they just like? 'Of course' if we were too unquestioning about it, and we said 'well, that person has got to be someone of the opposite sex, and it's got to be for life, and divorce is terrible', then we're stuck. But if you don't recognize the importance that kind of bond has for human beings - you can't really understand what is needed to live a good life.

The border between the natural and the supernatural, religion and philosophy, may not always be clear. But there are lines and we should know and accept which side of it we are on.

Being virtuous is wonderful thing, but feeling virtuous is a shortcut to vice.

True respect means taking other people's beliefs seriously and assuming they are adult and intelligent enough to be able to cope with it if you tell them, clearly and civility, why you think they are totally, utterly and disastrously wrong.

Philosophy is at its most engaged when it is impure. What is being recovered from the Ancient Greek model is not some lost idea of philosophy's pure essence, but the idea that philosophy is mixed up with everything else.

Wasn't it Bertrand Russell who used the phrase 'The superior virtue of the oppressed'? There is always this temptation amongst people that see themselves as progressive, and on the side of the weak. They demonize the powerful, but over-romanticize the weak. I think we should recognize that. If you take seriously the idea that people are always going to use truth claims as a means of powering their own agenda, that is going to happen whether you're weak or powerful.