We never get to the bottom of ourselves on our own. We discover who we are face to face and side by side with others in work, love and learning.

We're [humans] running great risks of doing things that will not be good for us. The cost can be very high indeed if we reach the point where we can't adapt to our own increasingly rapid adaptations. We run the risk of early extinction. So this certainly isn't a triumphalist story, but it is trying to get at what, in the very long run, leads to the amazing creatures that we are.

The family is in flux, and signs of trouble are widespread. Expectations remain high. But realities are disturbing.

The academic world is one of the few places where prejudice is supposed to be totally banned, and we're politically correct on everything, but it's still a place where you can attack religion out of utter, complete, bottomless ignorance and not be considered to have done anything wrong.

We have to treat others as part of who we are, rather than as a 'them' with whom we are in constant competition.

However painful the process of leaving home, for parents and for children, the really frightening thing for both would be the prospect of the child never leaving home.

Leaving home in a sense involves a kind of second birth in which we give birth to ourselves.