Conversation doesn’t have to lead to consensus about anything especially not values; it’s enough that it helps people get used to one another

I've long had the idea that the factors that are most important in determining what we believe, how we live, and what we accomplish are matters of accident. That is, we did not choose where to be born, who our parents would be, or what we would look like. Yet those factors play an enormous role in almost everything about is. W/regard to issues of cosmopolitanism, the most obvious point is that how we identify ourselves in terms of nationality, cultural subgroups, and religion are all pretty much a function of where we were born.

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.

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

If someone hates you, they won't ask you for things.

The version of cosmopolitanism that I favor is exactly about balancing universality and difference. Many people who believe rightly in universality, want, wrongly, I think, to impose their vision of the world on others. They think not just that there are universal truths but that they already know what they are. And they don't think they have anything to learn, as a result, from others. They don't converse, they try to convert.

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.