The greatest economic minds of the 19th century, all of them without exception, considered economic growth as a temporary necessity. When all human needs are satisfied, then we will have a stable economy, reproducing every year the same things. We will stop straining ourselves worrying about development or growth. How naïve they were! One more reason to be reluctant about predicting the future. No doubt they were wiser than me, but even they made such a mistake!

Once upon a time, when I was young, people saw a wedding as an event that determined the rest of their life. For a rising number of people today, it is quite normal to "try and err", marry, divorce, marry again.

'I am insecure' means: I can't cope on my own. The odds are overwhelming. I can't resist them on my own. I need us to join forces, stand shoulder to shoulder, march hand in hand.

I did not and do not think of the solidity-liquidity conundrum as a dichotomy; I view those two conditions as a couple locked, inseparably, in a dialectical bond.

State governments seek local remedies for the globally fabricated deprivations and miseries in vain - just as the individuals-by-the-decree-of-fate (read: by the impact of deregulation) seek in vain the individual solutions to the socially fabricated life problems.

Jews and Gypsies were well-nigh the only Diasporas in 19th century Europe. Now go to London, it is a collection of Diasporas.

What is assumed to be the materialisation of the inner truth of the self is in fact an idealisation of the material - objectified - traces of consumer choices.