As recently as the 1970s, the idea that the point of life was to get rich and that governments existed to facilitate this would have been ridiculed: not only by capitalism's traditional critics but also by many of its staunchest defenders.

We no longer ask of a judicial ruling or a legislative act: is it good? Is it fair? Is it just? Is it right? Will it help bring about a better society or a better world? Those used to be the political questions, even if they invited no easy answers. We must learn once again to pose them.

I don't believe that one should have one-size-fits-all moral rules for international political action.

We have responsibilities for others, not just across space but across time. We have responsibilities to people who came before us. They left us a world of institutions, ideas or possibilities for which we, in turn, owe them something. One of the things we owe them is not to squander them.

My history writing was based on what I saw in strange, exotic places rather than just reading books.

Words can make the illness a subject I can master, and not one that one simply emotes over.

It does irritate me when I am described as a controversialist and commentator on Israel.