After all, if you do not resist the apparently inevitable, you will never know how inevitable the inevitable was.

Men and women do not easily submit to a power that does not weave itself into the texture of their daily existence - one reason why culture remains so politically vital. Civilisation cannot get on with culture, and it cannot get on without it.

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.

Genuine equality means not treating everyone the same, but attending equally to everyone’s different needs.

Virtue is something you have to get good at, like playing the trombone or tolerating bores at parties. Being a virtuous human being takes practice; and those who are brilliant at being human (what Christians call the saints) are the virtuosi of the moral sphere - the Pavarottis and Maradonas of virtue.

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.

You can tell that the capitalist system is in trouble when people start talking about capitalism.