The East European small countries have a sense of betrayal, of having been forgotten by Western leaders.

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

I'm not sure I've learned anything new about life; but I've had to think harder about death and what comes after for other people.

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.

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

History can show you that it was one pile of bad stuff after another. It can also show you that there's been tremendous progress in knowledge, behaviour, laws, civilisation. It cannot show you that there was a meaning behind it.

American social arrangements, economic arrangements, the degree of inequality in American life, the relatively small role played by the government in American public life and so forth, compares to exactly the opposite conditions in most of the European societies.