There are many people of cosmopolitan temperament who are not from the elites of their societies or the world; and while, for a variety of reasons, I think a cosmopolitan spirit does naturally go with city life, that's the life of a very large proportion of human beings today. And I don't think rural people can't be cosmopolitan, in my sense.

I started philosophy looking for answers. But along the way I came to prize exploring the questions. Progress in philosophy consists, I think, in a clearer delineation of the conceptual options, not in reaching determinate conclusions.

I believe there are universal moral values - some of which are very well served by a cosmopolitan attitude. You can think that there are universal values without supposing that everyone agrees as to what they are and without supposing that you have got them all right either.

The challenge, then, is to take minds and hearts formed over the long millennia of living in local troops and equip them with ideas and institutions that will allow us to live together as the global tribe we have become.

A value is like a fax machine: it’s not much use if you’re the only one who has one.

Plenty of people within the Moslem world are not engaged in a clash with te West and don't want to do so; and none of the terrorist acts was an attack by the Moslem world on the West. They were attacks by particular groups of Moslems on particular Western individuals or nations. If we allow ourselves to de driven to thinking of every Moslem as an enemy or every Westerner as a friend, for that matter in these circumstances, we'll have no basis for moving forward.

There are many people of cosmopolitan temperament who are not from the elites of their societies or the world; and while, for a variety of reasons, I think a cosmopolitan spirit does naturally go with city life, that's the life of a very large proportion of human beings today. And I don't think rural people can't be cosmopolitan, in my sense.