“The 1950s and 1960s had been a period of enormous growth, the highest in American history, maybe in economic history.”

The European Central Bank has only the first. It has no commitment to keep employment up.

It followed international law and treaty obligations. It collected evidence, brought the evidence to the highest existing tribunal, the International Court of Justice, and received a verdict – which, of course, the U.S. dismissed with contempt.

I don’t think that experience is a very useful or convincing attribute for a sensible foreign policy. Henry Kissinger had a lot of experience.

In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued – they may be essential to survival.

Now that’s so deep in history that there’s no point even bringing it up, but it did once exist.

Libertarian socialism is properly to be regarded as the inheritor of the liberal ideals of the Enlightenment.

NATO was constructed on the – with the reason, whether one believes it or not, that it was going to defend Western Europe from Russian assault.

The polls show that concern over inequality among the general public rose pretty sharply after the Occupy movement started, very probably as a consequence. And there are other policy issues that came to the fore, which are significant.

It’s a trap for the rest of your life because the laws are designed so that you can’t get out of it. If a business, say, gets in too much debt, it can declare bankruptcy, but individuals can almost never be relieved of student debt through bankruptcy.

If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.

The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history.

I don’t join the New Atheists. So, for example, I wouldn’t have the arrogance to lecture some mother who hopes to see her dying child in Heaven – that’s none of my business, ultimately. I won’t lecture her on the philosophy of science.

A war with Pakistan would be an utter disaster.

Remember, weapons of mass destruction don’t mean missiles.

If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.

In America, the professor talks to the mechanic. They are in the same category.

By this means she will demonstrate capability and ensure recognition of equality in the social and economic equation.

And no matter what’s happening in the Middle East – the Arab Spring, et cetera, the economic challenges, high rates of unemployment – the emotional, critical issue is always the Israeli-Palestinian one.

The environmentalist’s dream is an egalitarian society based on: rejection of economic growth, a smaller population, eating lower on the food chain, consuming a lot less, and sharing a much lower level of resources much more equally.

I am an economic person; I judge the amount of work involved with the amount of worth attained.

There are many ways of supporting gender equality, from something as simple as paid sick leave and flexible work hours to attributing an economic value to all care-giving, and making that amount tax deductible.

At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race economic independence.

Globalisation is not something that we can hold off or turn off. It is the economic equivalent of a force of nature, like wind or water.

Legislators represent people, not trees or acres. Legislators are elected by voters, not farms or cities or economic interests.