Take something you really don't think about: Plastics in the ocean. I mean plastics in the ocean have an enormous ecological effect.

The people who live on the land - Israelis and Palestinians - have a right to live in security and peace.

There is still much debate about whether torture has been effective in eliciting information - the assumption being, apparently, that if it is effective, then it may be justified.

A person who issues that charge that someone adheres to the principle "do as I say, not as I do" has three options: produce an example; withdraw the charge; take the coward's way out and slink away silently.

I still think, despite everything, that the US is very unlikely to attack Iran. It could be a huge catastrophe; nobody knows what the consequences would be. I imagine that only an administration that's really desperate would resort to that.

We had one or another form of state capitalism during an extremely brief period of human history, which tells us essentially nothing about human nature. If you look at human societies and human interactions, you can find anything. You find selfishness, you find altruism, you find sympathy.

My suspicion is that those who seem oblivious to suffering, whether it is nearby or in remote corners, are for the most part unaware, perhaps blinded by doctrine and ideology. For them, the answer is to develop a critical attitude toward articles of faith, secular or religious; to encourage their capacity to question, to explore, to view the world from the standpoint of others. And direct exposure is never very far away, wherever we live - perhaps the homeless person huddling in the cold or asking for a few pennies for food, or all too many more.