In the deep night of metaphysics, all cats look black.

Language, identity and forms of life are the terms in which political demands are shaped and voiced.

It is in Rousseau's writing above all that history begins to turn from upper-class honour to middle-class humanitarianism. Pity, sympathy and compassion lie at the centre of his moral vision. Values associated with the feminine begin to infiltrate social existence as a whole, rather than being confined to the domestic sphere.

The German philosopher Walter Benjamin had the curious notion that we could change the past. For most of us, the past is fixed while the future is open.

If it is true that we need a degree of certainty to get by, it is also true that too much of the stuff can be lethal.

I say that virtue is really all about enjoying yourself, living fully; but of course it is far from obvious what living fully actually means.

There is no way in which we can retrospectively erase the Treaty of Vienna or the Great Irish Famine. It is a peculiar feature of human actions that, once performed, they can never be recuperated. What is true of the past will always be true of it.