We need to start talking about inequality again; we need to start talking about the inequities and unfairnesses and the injustices of an excessively divided society, divided by wealth, by opportunity, by outcome, by assets and so forth.

If active or concerned citizens forfeit politics, they thereby abandon their society to its most mediocre and venal public servants

My generation those who were students in the late 60s was always, in the words of the Who, talking about our generation. That's what we thought of ourselves, as the most important thing since sliced bread. And the "we" that we meant was really the Western Europeans and American generation. And as I think back I suppose I have a sense of guilt on behalf of my generation, a sense that we were terribly provincial and didn't understand the really important stuff that was going on in Eastern Europe.

What I am against is false optimism: the notion either that things have to go well, or else that they tend to, or else that the default condition of historical trajectories is characteristically beneficial in the long-run.

I don't believe in an afterlife. I don't believe in a single or multiple godhead. I respect people who do, but I don't believe it myself.

Unlike memory, which confirms and reinforces itself, history contributes to the disenchantment of the world.

The military system of a nation is not an independent section of the social system but an aspect of its totality.