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'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.

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.

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

In life, the challenge is not so much to figure out how best to play the game; the challenge is to figure out what game you're playing

When philosophers talk about reason they often have in mind Having been in the business of philosophy more than half my life, I have learned that reason doesn't change many minds. But there's a more ordinary sense of resonableness, which involves not just logic but a sensitivity to other peoples real concerns, a desire to understand, even when you don't agree. Many people are reasonable in this way.I'm willing to think that the world will be made better by the conversations of reasonable people, even if there are unreasonable people and people who don't want to converse as well.

Conversations...begin with the sort of imaginative engagement you get when you read a novel or watch a movie or attend to a work of art that speaks from some place other than your own. So I'm using the word 'conversation' not only for literal talk but also as a metaphor for engagement with the experience and ideas of others. And I stress the role of the imagination here because the encounters, properly conducted, are valuable in themselves. 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.