The pleasures of mental agility are much overstated, inevitably - as it now appears to me - by those not exclusively dependent upon them.
From Tony Judt
I don't want to be the passively alert vegetable in the corner that takes in everything but can't communicate, which I think would suck a lot of life out of my family without giving very much to me.
Social democrats are characteristically modest - a political quality whose virtues are overestimated. We need to apologise a little less for our shortcomings and speak more assertively of achievements. That these were always incomplete should not trouble us.
I don't believe that one should have one-size-fits-all moral rules for international political action.
History always happens to us and nothing ever stays the same.
I do think we're on the edge of a terrifying world, and that many young people know that but don't know how to talk about it.
I don't believe in an afterlife. I don't believe in a single or multiple godhead. I respect people who do, but I don't believe it myself.
My history writing was based on what I saw in strange, exotic places rather than just reading books.
Obviously a primary liberal conviction is that we should be tolerant of other peoples' convictions. But if we believe in something, we had better find ways to say so convincingly.
I grew up in a world where the social democratic state was the norm, not the exception.
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