Showing 10 of 6504 quotes
Balancing the common good with the freedom and liberty to exercise that individuality has been and remains a challenge for those committed to democracy while understanding that the polis ensures our participation and therefore our citizenship. ”
What is it that unites, on the left of British politics, George Orwell, Billy Bragg, Gordon Brown and myself? An understanding that identity and a sense of belonging need to be linked to our commitment to nationhood and a modern form of patriotism. ”
Human nature is you get carried away, so we have to protect ourselves from ourselves. ”
Being home secretary involves having to face some of the worst of human behaviour and challenges of modern society. ”
I think we can allow the therapeutic uses of nuclear transplant technology, which we call cloning, without running the danger of actually having live human beings born. ”
People who have expertise just love to share it. That's human nature. ”
Computers were programmed to swap out error-prone, inconsistent human calculation with digital perfection. ”
Ontologically, chocolate raises profoundly disturbing questions: Does not chocolate offer natural revelation of the goodness of the Creator just as chilies disclose a divine sense of humor? Is the human born with an innate longing for chocolate? Does the notion of chocolate preclude the concept of free will? ”
Very few species have survived unchanged. There's one called lingula, which is a little shellfish, a little brachiopod about the size of my fingernail, that has survived for 500 million years, but it's survived by being unobtrusive and doing nothing, and you can't accuse human beings of that. ”
I was trying to find out what it was that everybody else understood without giving up my stubborn and hard-won lack of understanding. ”