“... We may have​ mixed feelings about the title of Steven Spielberg’s new movie, Disclosure Day. Doesn’t it sound a bit legal? How close is ‘disclosure’ to its apparent synonyms ‘revelation’ and ‘exposure’? Spielberg invites us to dismiss these worries and enjoy our liberal selves. When, about halfway through the film, a character talks about ‘full disclosure’, meaning a sort of triumph, he is looking forward to a spectacular, worldwide explosion of revealed meaning and trust in the unknown ...”

“... grand-children? When the legal barriers are lifted and the violence suppressed, some sort of hope may return, opportunities may open up, and after a generation or two there may be some success stories. But the situation is not as it was before the injustice or as it would have been had ...”

“... part in a research project prompted by the government-sponsored campaign of 2013, when Theresa May was home secretary, in which vans carried billboards bearing the words ‘In the UK illegally? Go home or face arrest.’ In order to understand how such a thing as that billboard could have come about, we felt we needed some insight into the mindset of the ...”

“... gold that glitters, siftsthrough cooling depths      and in the sediment            may hold,may hatch, may crawl,      may feed, may fly;            what survives is ...”

“... a British government would do, one need look no further than Hong Kong in spring 1989. In late May, a sixth of its population twice marched for democracy, and they meant democracy in Hong Kong as well as mainland China. We are liable to forget that the British Government denied the vote to the people of Hong Kong until negotiations for the return of the ...”

“... by an ‘other-regarding’ element concerning that loved person, even though the two elements may be extremely hard to disentangle. The death of somebody one did not know appears to us as a different type of phenomenon altogether. We can read about victims of accidents or epidemics or famines with comparative equanimity, and we are evidently able to turn ...”

“... written solus, were brilliant essays: but Relevance is more systematic and technical, and Wilson may be guessed to sing its cantus firmus. The result is a decisive contribution to our thinking about language. Relevance has a strategic importance, which makes its comparative neglect astonishing, and raises a question whether this ...”

“... echoes that of Darwin’s joint presentation with Wallace to the Linnaean Society in 1858 may appear not only presumptuous but also inappropriate to a commemoration of Radcliffe-Brown, whose lifelong concern was with structure and function rather than with evolution, and whose vision of ‘a natural science of society’ was, it has often been ...”

“... checkpoints. These are the most likely sites of confrontation in the war for the North that may have begun by the time these words are published. When battle begins, the checkpoints will disappear as quickly as the diplomatic checkpoints disappeared on Bush Junior’s relentless march to Baghdad. Most of the several hundred journalists prowling Northern ...”

“... see the Bass on the horizon on the south edge of the firth. Further north lies the lower Isle of May, a mile long. I try to go to the May in May every year, to mark my birthday; a tourist boat sails daily from Anstruther throughout the season. Or ordinarily it does. In 2018, I went not ...”

“... willing to be taught the elements of neurobiology, but I learned almost nothing. Of course, it may have been my expectations that were at fault. Damasio, I now realise, is an ideas man: not a retailer of small facts but a manufacturer of big pictures. His trademark suggestion is simple but vivid: the brain is not a cold, calculating, logical machine, but a ...”

“... buttresses of a masculine ideology. Presented thus, the conflict of attitudes towards the family may seem a straight fight between right and left, a political battle in the narrowest sense. Or it may seem a conflict between the self-interested conservatism of men, and the imaginative radicalism of women, who, if they are ...”

“... debar one from all the cakes and ale of comfortable prejudices. Yet the very possibility of what may be called ‘lower-case liberalism’ – of endorsing liberal principles without committing oneself to all that Liberal politics may from time to time involve – that possibility has meant, on the whole, a less hostile ...”

“... a case that was ‘screamingly funny’. No chance of Sunday, I’m afraid. But wait, there may be. I’ll never forget my face when I came home unexpectedly. Little imitation things were spread out on the floor. I had an idea that would have made everything all right. Supposing something bad happened and I had to be unhappy? Old people advised me to ...”

“... been, in countless ways, different. So why is the Universe as it is?These questions, some believe, may have causal answers. Suppose first that the Universe has always existed. Some believe that, if all events were caused by earlier events, everything would be explained. That, however, is not so. Even an infinite series of events cannot explain itself. We could ...”