Our desires are never wholly transparent, even to ourselves.

Neiman's book is written with considerable flair, as many critics have already noted, but it possesses a far rarer and more valuable quality: moral seriousness. Her argument builds a powerful emotional force, a sense of deep inevitability. . . . It is not often that a work of such dark conclusions has felt so hopeful and brave.

Socrates was likewise right that pissing people off is how we first, and maybe best, go about the business of provoking thought.

Never before, I suspect, have so many people been so rich to so little purpose.

Ambition is ever tempered by experience. Otherwise, fortune makes fools of us all.

For every apparent gain, in short, we now observe a balancing danger. This is the world we have created.

We tend to think of the problems of globalization and cultural identity as peculiar to our times. In fact they are rooted in ancient problems of civic belonging.