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“... Every country has its social obsession, and class is undoubtedly the British, or at any rate English, obsession. It is, to be sure, more amusing than some others. When Franz Josef Strauss recently argued that the Nazis had, after all, been ‘National Socialists’ and were therefore closer to the Social Democrats than to him, his extraordinary invective backfired, but the intensity of the public debate that followed showed that the subject was close to an understandable, and deadly serious, German obsession ...”

“... The proof of a theory may lie in its application, but application means very different things in different corners of the universe of the mind. Expecting an eclipse of the sun at a certain time and place, and for a certain duration, is one kind of application. Producing a silicon chip which programmes certain operations is another kind. But in the social sciences there are no such tangible applications (and we all pay the price for the fact that some seem to believe that economics is different ...”

“... Britain’s​ 45 universities are attractive, efficient, and cheap. In 1978, they attracted 250,000 home and 40,000 overseas students. While Continental countries, notably France and Germany, make great efforts to attract students from overseas by subsidies and quotas, such students seem to come to Britain naturally, and despite all attempts at deterring them ...”

“... Must social policy be boring? After all, economic policy still keeps people awake while the phoney war between neo-Keynesians and monetarists lasts. Political policy (sit venia verba) continues to excite the adherents and opponents of adversary politics. Educational policy naturally interests the new educational class which dominates the journals and the universities ...”

“... were joined by their habitual cronies, Graham Wallas and Shaw, makes a good story: one which Ralf Dahrendorf is essentially ready to credit in his unexpectedly fine history. It is not unexpected, of course, that a major history would be produced to mark the centenary, if not of the Borough Farm breakfast, then of the inauguration of an academic ...”

“... the dominant political creed of the North Atlantic world. Its achievements have been enormous. As Ralf Dahrendorf points out in his important and persuasive pamphlet, ‘After Social Democracy’,* ‘it has turned the empty promise of freedom of contract into effective citizenship rights; the welfare state lies at the heart of social democratic ...”

“... It is not disarming when Professor Dahrendorf writes, in the very first sentence of his Preface: ‘The subject of this volume is simple: what are human societies about?’ And later: ‘What is human society and its history about?’ The intention is probably to appear informal, friendly and approachable, and at the same time to be profound in theme: but the effect is depressing ...”

“... concerns and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands.’ One of the themes of Sir Ralf Dahrendorf’s Reflections on the Revolution in Europe is that this view, perhaps the dominant one in both the West and the post-Communist East, is simple and wrong. Ever the good Popperian liberal, Sir Ralf believes ...”

“... own public spirit. At the centre and on the centre-left, a disparate band including Paddy Ashdown, Ralf Dahrendorf, Raymond Plant and Julian le Grand have suggested that the state should be the guarantor of social-citizenship rights rather than the provider of services, in the old Beveridgean way. Charter 88 sees the root of our political ills in a ...”

“... or the triumph of mere levelling. It continues to have a tenacious grip on just that audience. Ralf Dahrendorf taught post-1945 West Germany lessons from Tocqueville-in particular, that it was not enough to repent of the misdeeds of the Third Reich, that democracy needed ‘the antagonism of opinions’ more than the concerted mouthing of Cold War ...”

“... West Germany became a uniquely competitive and meritocratic society. This was far from all. As Ralf Dahrendorf was probably the first to recognise, the two forces that had between them worn down the Weimar Republic – the eastern aristocracy (the Junkers whom Max Weber had identified as the Reich’s main roadblock to capitalist modernity) and the ...”

“... of the states than with the habits of the community – with the nature, or the absence, of what Ralf Dahrendorf and others have called ‘civil society’ – Burgerlich Gesellschaft. There has been an unspoken assumption in the West that the only obstacle to the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe adopting Western values and structures has been the ...”

“... and Popper, these traits stand out. The Austrian duo have their own important differences, as Ralf Dahrendorf has recently suggested. But the common features are plain. The specialised work of each, in the fields of economics and philosophy of science, has been radically original and systematic in a way Berlin’s contribution to the history of ideas ...”