Civilisation, the orderly world in which we live, is frail. We are skating on thin ice. There is a fear of a collective disaster. Terrorism, genocide, flu, tsunamis.

You judge a society by the decency of living of the weakest

Power, in a nutshell, is the ability to get things done, and politics is the ability to decide which things need to be done.

Unlike 'real relationships', 'virtual relationships' are easy to enter and to exit. They look smart and clean, feel easy to use, when compared with the heavy, slow-moving, messy real stuff.

Questioning the ostensibly unquestionable premises of our way of life is arguably the most urgent of services we owe our fellow humans and ourselves.

For one to be free there must be at least two.

You are a stranger, I am a stranger, we all remain strangers, and nevertheless we can like or even love each other.

The rationality of the ruled is always the weapon of the rulers.

We belong to talking, not what talking is about... Stop talking - and you are out. Silence equals exclusion.

The task for sociology is to come to the help of the individual. We have to be in service of freedom. It is something we have lost sight of.

The value of other people is that they have something unique to offer.

Fashion is everything that goes out of fashion.

Don't let pain keep you out of the garden.

...what is the use of making everybody rich if the rich themselves are miserable?

...once students have been taught that learning is tedious, difficult, and useless, they will never learn another lesson.

Perfection is insignificant. Is boring.

Plan and execute your first failure so that you no longer have to fear it.

Rank does not intimidate hardware. Neither does the lack of rank.

There are some whom the applause of the multitude has deluded into the belief that they are really statesmen.

They give you a round bat and they throw you a round ball. And they tell you to hit it square.