There is nothing that an intellectual less likes to change than his mind, or a politician his policy.

A curious reversal in the locus of moral concern has taken place: people feel responsible for everything except for what they do.

Childhood in large parts of modern Britain, at any rate, has been replaced by premature adulthood, or rather adolescence. Children grow up very fast but not very far. That is why it is possible for 14 year olds now to establish friendships with 26 year olds - because they know by the age of 14 all they are ever going to know.

When every benefit received is a right, there is no place for good manners, let alone for gratitude.

Orders can be benign or malign, but the habit of obeying them can become ingrained.

Obesity is the result of a loss of self-control. Indeed, loss of self-control might be said to be the defining social (or anti-social) characteristic of our age: public drunkenness, excessive gambling, promiscuity and common-or-garden rudeness are all examples of our collective loss of self-control.

It is only by having desire thwarted, and thereby learning to control it — in other words, by becoming civilized — that men become fully human.