“Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.”

As victims of hurt, we frequently don’t bring up what ails us, because so many wounds look absurd in the light of day.

There are selections so acute that they come to define a place, with the result that we can no longer travel through that landscape without being reminded of what a great artist noticed there.

Socrates, on being insulted in the marketplace, asked by a passerby, “Don’t you worry about being called names?” retorted, “Why? Do you think I should resent it if an ass had kicked me?

Although I don’t believe in God, Bach’s music shows me what a love of God must feel like.

When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I’m basically the child of Richard Dawkins.

The challenge of modern relationships: how to prove more interesting than the other’s smartphone.

William James once made an acute point about the relationship between happiness and expectation. He argued that satisfaction with ourselves does not require us to succeed in every endeavour.

Mental health: having enough safe places in your mind for your thoughts to settle.

One’s doing well if age improves even slightly one’s capacity to hold on to that vital truism: “This too shall pass.

Bad art might be defined as a series of bad choices about what to show and what to leave out.

As an atheist, I think there are lots of things religions get up to which are of value to non-believers – and one of those things is trying to be a bit better than we normally manage to be.

A good half of the art of living is resilience.

Because it’s bad enough not getting what you want, but it’s even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn’t, in fact, what you wanted all along.

When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes.

Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.

I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.

You must refuse every- thing that is not pure and holy. God wants you pure in heart. He wants you to have an intense desire after holiness…

We must not run after it, but we must fit ourselves for the vision and then wait tranquilly for it.

Look after the present and the future will look after itself.

In every kid’s life, there’s about three or four years when you’re at liberty, and after that, you have to get a job because you’re getting married or you have to support your parents or whatever it is.

You learn all the best stuff in life after you leave school.

I admit I’m being paid well, but it’s no more than I deserve. After all, I’ve been screwed more times than a hooker.

What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what’s going on.

I can honestly say, after talking about my mom passing away, I got the biggest weight off of my chest.