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.

Books, like lives, are always unfinished even when they end, for to write is to struggle with contingency, to impose a certain false order upon the endless, and endlessly frustrating, nature of thought.

We don't know what the future will bring, but that's because we are ever in the process of creating it, not because it is an alien force to which we have to submit.

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.

I hold to the idea that civility, understood as the willingness to engage in public discourse, is the first virtue of citizens.

Tyranny is abhorrent, freedom benefits all, whereas violence benefits no one for long.

How doe we create the world we want, rather than a world that just happens to us?