When I first came to Oxford, I struggled to feel comfortable in an Anglican, public school-dominated institution.

The West may collapse very suddenly. Complex civilizations do that, because they operate, most of the time, on the edge of chaos.

Today, the average Korean works a thousand hours more a year than the average German. A thousand. ... That is the end of the Great Divergence.

I can't imagine having a conversation about 'Celebrity Big Brother' in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

I think the condition of imperial denial is a handicap because if you do not recognize that you are essentially performing the functions of an empire, you are incapable of learning from the mistakes of past empires.

I think that it is important to be gregarious, and that friendships are not just a leisure pursuit, that they are an integral part of what it is to be human, and one does better work if one has a circle of friends that is active.

The Japanese Co-Prosperity Zone began as a racist utopia and ended as a cross between an abbatoir, a plantation and a brothel.