Whether you're a libertarian liberal or a more egalitarian liberal, the idea is that justice means being non-judgmental with respect to the preferences people bring to public life.

The way things are does not determine the way they ought to be

Self-knowledge is like lost innocence; however unsettling you find it, it can never be 'unthought' or 'unknown'.

The simplest way of understanding justice is giving people what they deserve. This idea goes back to Aristotle. The real difficulty begins with figuring out who deserves what and why.

Democracy does not require perfect equality, but it does require that citizens share in a common life.

To argue about justice is unavoidably to argue about virtues, about substantive moral and even spiritual questions.

I think too often in our society parents, who may have good impulses, overreach and try to mold and shape and direct their child.

Aiming at giving our kids a competitive edge in a consumer society - that, in principle, is a goal that is limitless.

You can't go wrong with fish and chips.

What intrigued me most was not the technology as such but the questions about the human goods, the fundamental human values and virtues that are raised by debates over biotechnology.

The most fateful change that unfolded during the past three decades was not an increase in greed. It was the expansion of markets, and of market values, into spheres of life where they don’t belong.

We want to make certain that we view culture through the eyes of faith, that we don't view our faith through the eyes of culture.

For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain.

I have had so much public support.

But, is it possible for princes and ministers to be enlightened, when private individuals are not so?

For what can power give more than food and drink, To live at ease, and not be bound to think?

It's a fun thing to do, to put yourself in the service of something if you think you can add an interpretation. It's no different than any other storytelling.

When you're unhappy, I guess everything in the world - reading, eating, sleeping - has something buried somewhere inside it that just makes you unhappier.

The great break of my literary career was going to law school.

One must know one's own secret.

The sea cries with its meaningless voice, Treating alike its dead and its living