It is false to believe that the sun revolves around the earth, but it is not absurd.

A socialist is just someone who is unable to get over his or her astonishment that most people who have lived and died have spent lives of wretched, fruitless, unremitting toil.

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.

Today, nostalgia is almost as unacceptable as racism.

If history, philosophy and so on vanish from academic life, what they leave in their wake may be a technical training facility or corporate research institute. But it will not be a university in the classical sense of the term, and it would be deceptive to call it one.

I attacked Dawkins's book on God because I think he is theologically illiterate.

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.