At the simplest level, only people who know they do not know everything will be curious enough to find things out.

The mobile middle class gravitates to the cities where housing is affordable.

The impulse for personal adornment is hard to stamp out.

At the simplest level, only people who know they do not know everything will be curious enough to find things out.

Glamour is translucent — not transparent, not opaque. It invites us into the world but it doesn’t give us a completely clear picture.

In a dynamic, decentralized system of individual choice and responsibility, people do not have to trust any authority but their own.

European nations began World War I with a glamorous vision of war, only to be psychologically shattered by the realities of the trenches. The experience changed the way people referred to the glamour of battle; they treated it no longer as a positive quality but as a dangerous illusion.