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

As far as belief goes, postmodernism prefers to travel light: it has beliefs, to be sure, but it does not have faith

What's wrong with a bit of nostalgia between friends? I think nostalgia sometimes gets too much of a bad press.

Anyone can be tolerant of those who are tolerant.

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.

Rousseau ranks among the great educational theorists of the modern era, even if he was the last man to put in charge of a classroom. Young adults, he thought, should be allowed to develop their capabilities in their distinctive way.

Universities are no longer educational in any sense of the word that Rousseau would have recognised. Instead, they have become unabashed instruments of capital. Confronted with this squalid betrayal, one imagines he would have felt sick and oppressed.