“Privacy is absolutely essential to maintaining a free society. The idea that is at the foundation of the notion of privacy is that the citizen is not the tool or instrument of government – but the reverse… If you have no privacy, it will tend to follow that you have no political freedom.”

Yale is a crucible in American life for the accommodation of intellectual achievement, of wisdom, of refinement, with the democratic ideals of openness, of social justice and of equal opportunity.

The most serious problems of freedom of expression in our society today exist on our campuses. The assumption seems to be that the purpose of education is to induce correct opinion rather than to search for wisdom and to liberate the mind….

To take the measure of oneself by reference to one’s colleagues leads to envy or complacency rather than constructive self-examination.

Yale’s greatness carries an urgent need to guard against the fall of excellence into exclusivity, of refinement into preciousness, of elegance into class and convention.

Attitudes on campuses often presage tendencies in the larger society. If that is so with respect to freedom of expression, the erosion of principle we have seen throughout our society in recent years may be only the beginning.

In that it placed the individual person first in the political scheme of things and made the legitimacy of governments and ruling classes contingent on their success at preserving individual rights.

If the country is to survive as a democracy it will depend on voters who understand how our political institutions have evolved and the events that went into their creation.

Political thriller? International thriller? Financial thriller? Whatever you call it, The Ascendant is smart, edgy, fast-paced storytelling at its best.

Everywhere in the world there are tensions – economic, political, religious. So we need chocolate.

We need to invent a non-Euclidian mathematics with respect to political discipline.

We are a muslim country. We don’t know something called colonialism and political parties.

On the other hand, to eradicate illiteracy requires that we elect a fair and efficient political regime.

Its unlikely hero, Garrett Reilly, reminded me of a young Jack Reacher as a tech-sa What I said: “Political thriller? International thriller? Financial thriller? Whatever you call it,