“... science’ – the modern science of the mind, and of possible minds. The idea that there might be laws of thought transcending our intelligence is rooted in antiquity; Aristotelian logic was long regarded as a statement of such laws, and in modern times the mathematical logician feels free to ignore the feebleness of human ...”

“... dilemma: how could reason play an effective part in a physical world governed by uniform natural laws? How could thinking make a difference in reality? His solution, which involved an immaterial ‘mind or soul’ interacting with the brain, may well be as ridiculous as most people now think; but the general argument – that an understanding of the brain ...”

“... of Europe, notably Britain, the American Revolution may still be unfinished. Looking back in 1818, John Adams asked a fundamental question: ‘But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the hearts and minds of the people; a change in their religious ...”

“... for being captured 13 times and 17 times sold into slavery, going from the Ethiopia of Prester John to the Japan of the Daimyos and St Francis Xavier? Some say that he was a prodigy, as well as one of the great Portuguese classics, the prose equivalent of Camoens; others say that he was a liar. Rebecca Catz says that he was a satirist, that his whole ...”

“... victim, according to the new economic thinking, of a fundamental misunderstanding of labour market laws of supply and demand. So public policy again changed track, and moved not towards socialism, but towards liberal-collectivist state welfare and a planned economy as advocated by Beveridge and Keynes. We thought we knew every vale of tears in this landscape ...”

“... while a trader said: ‘You have to understand, it’s us against the bank.’ The rules, the laws, are annoyances to be fought against and worked around, all in pursuit of the only thing which is real: profit. The changes to banking proposed by the commissions and the government have to be mediated through the existing culture of banking. Too many ...”

“... what you can, control what you can’t,’ has proved congenial for different reasons to John Major and Tony Blair, and to Blair’s heir apparent, Gordon Brown. These men are to Jenkins Thatcher’s political ‘sons’, with David Cameron trotting along behind as a ‘grandson’. (The book was completed before Cameron’s Conservatives abandoned ...”

“... preface to this celebratory volume of essays presented to Dame Helen Gardner on her 70th birthday, John Carey apologises for the fact that the topics discussed are restricted to 16th and 17th-century English literature. Dame Helen’s latest book, after all, was The Composition of ‘The Four Quartets’. Eliot’s presence, though, still hovers over ...”

“... The first letter​ – five lines written to his father in April 1943 when John McGahern was eight years old – could take an entire book to gloss:Dear Daddy,        Thanks very much for the pictures. I had great fun reading them. Come to see us soon. We got two goats. Uncle Pat does not like them. Will you bring over my bicycle please and games ...”

“... nature of your constitution; you contend that the king’s instructions to his governors are not laws, and think yourselves at liberty to regard or disregard them at your own discretion. But those instructions are not like the pocket instructions given to a minister going abroad, for regulating his conduct in some trifling point of ceremony. They are first ...”

“... vernacular anti-Semitism which had first excused and then validated everything from the Nuremberg Laws to the gas chambers and might readily have made collaborators of families like Harvey’s if Hitler had crossed the Channel. But it didn’t feel like that either to him or to me. What it presented me with was my first existential dilemma. If I now told ...”

“... In 1548, four years after the Princess finished the translation, it was published by the Reformer John Bale, one of Elizabeth’s mentors, under the purposively improved title, A Godly Meditation of the Christian Soul. Bale had his reasons, as Shell shows, and he encoded them (nothing was then written entirely en clair, it seems) in the learned Epistle ...”

“... approach to unification differs from the reductionism of Wilson, which seems to say that the laws of biology can be distilled to those of chemistry, which can be further reduced to those of physics. Boulding’s is a more ‘holistic’ approach. He believes that some phenomena are more fruitfully studied as a whole rather than as a set of chemical or ...”

“... why. Gallery dealers, fellow painters, school friends, college friends, relatives and former in-laws – all are interviewed. Alison Lurie provides transcripts of their answers, not Polly’s questions, these transcripts forming an almost impersonal running commentary on Polly’s investigations. Alongside them go Polly’s own journeys and ...”

“... as anyone’s – and insisted that the English, by virtue of their religion, literature and laws, were as Jewish as he was. Douglas Hurd and Edward Young’s Disraeli: or, the Two Lives, and Robert O’Kell’s Disraeli: The Romance of Politics diverge when they come to Disraeli’s Byronism. Hurd and Young wave it aside: ‘Disraeli aspired to a career ...”