There are areas of philosophy that are important, but I think of them as being subsumed by other fields. In the case of descriptive philosophy, you have literature or logic, which, in my view, is really mathematics.

Scientists don't read theology; they don't read philosophy. It doesn't make any difference to what they're doing - for better or worse, it may not be a value judgment, but it's true.

Philosophy used to be a field that had content, but then 'natural philosophy' became physics, and physics has only continued to make inroads. Every time there's a leap in physics, it encroaches on these areas that philosophers have carefully sequestered away to themselves, and so then you have this natural resentment on the part of philosophers.

Education is far less about a set of facts than a way of thinking, than learning how to critically think. And therefore, what I always think should be the basis of education is not answers but questions.

Peace is not wimpy. It's about sitting down and negotiating with people you hate. Ultimately, all occupation ends, and you have to deal with the enemy.

I am a member of the Peace Society because I was a soldier: because I have fought and seen what war is like from personal experience. It was on the battlefield that I pledged myself to the cause of peace.

The post-Cold War order in Europe is finished, with Vladimir Putin its executioner. Russia's invasion of Georgia only marked its passing. Russia has emerged as a born-again 19th-century power determined to challenge the intellectual, moral and institutional foundations of the order.

I really am not going to get involved in a discussion about the legal position of the Iraq war. I am not the person to do that because I am not sufficiently impartial as a lawyer about this, because it's a matter that is of interest to the person that I am closest to in the world.