Choice matters. You might have the opportunity to eat a nutritious diet, though you might choose to eat a lousy diet. What matters is the opportunity.

It's not as though there aren't many, many art works and many other cultures, but there was something special about the civic nature of the Greek theater. All the citizens stopped working. They came into these theaters. It wasn't like a Broadway theater where you sit in the dark and you expect to be passively entertained. You're in this theater, amphitheater, in bright sunlight looking at your fellow citizens, recognizing their faces, and thinking with them about the future of your city. I think very few cultures have had a theatrical tradition that is quite so civic.

We have to change men's expectations, as they grow up, regarding their share of domestic work, of child care, but also of elder care, which is less pleasant and which men don't want to do.

Life is about more than earning a living, and if you're not in the habit of thinking about it, you can end up middle-aged or even older and shocked to realize that your life seems empty.

It's a good thing that we're protected by tenure and academic freedom, but we should realize that it creates a risk of getting cut off. Scholars should write, at least sometimes, for the general public.

The GDP approach doesn't address many aspects of human life: health, education, political liberty, religious liberty, employment opportunities. And these are not all that well correlated with gross domestic product. We also have to think about equality among groups. And freedom of speech and religion. China always ranks near the top of developing countries these days, but there are lots of things we might see as lacking in China.

With the rise of capitalism, it became more obvious that people pursue individual self-interest. The great nationalist in Italy, Giuseppe Mazzini, a wonderful philosopher, said that we need the nation. We need something that people can lean on, from which they can then reach out to the whole world. The idea of all humanity is too vague. It can't motivate human aspiration in a reliable way.