“... America. Repudiating the ‘reformist’ policies of the continent’s Communist Parties, this self-proclaimed Leninist rejected, not only the urban proletariat, but also the peasantry, as the motive force of the revolution. For, far from living among the peasants ‘like fish in water’ (Mao), the revolutionary base ought to remain for ever on the ...”

“... In view of all this, one is tempted to proscribe any further dealings with one’s apocalyptic self, for fear of giving comfort to the enemy. But it won’t do: that self is in all of us, for good and for ill, and if repressed will only the sooner start infecting our human intercourse. Lawrence, though pre-nuclear, still ...”

“... very expensive City suit, the healthy confidence of skin and voice, the profound self assurance of manner and gesture, seemed to belong in a different, moneyed or orthodox-political world.’ Lewis also notices that, beneath ‘the broker’s manner’, the officer has ‘a better than adequate level of scientific knowledge’. An older man ...”

“... of the supernatural. None of them left any autobiographical documents that compare, in depth of self-revelation, with those of the less reticent and more literary Victorians who searched their souls as the higher criticism of the Bible, the geological theories that reduced Genesis to a bundle of myths, and scientific materialism, wrought havoc with their ...”

“... principles of Locke and Berkeley, belief in the external world, in induction, and even in the self, was ungrounded and unreasonable. The conclusion was that our knowledge could reach no further than our present and perhaps past mental states. Reason had demonstrated the falsity of some of our deepest, even instinctive, beliefs. A rival interpretation ...”

“... teaches us to think of ourselves as if we were all ‘entrepreneurs’. The emphasis on ‘self-realisation’, ‘finding out what you really want and going for it’ and so on, is typically coupled with a sublime faith that if each person ‘realises his true goals’ then all will be for the best with society – and this is nothing but Adam ...”

“... was a mere barbarian princeling). The book is not a biography but a portrait, indeed a kind of self-portrait, an attempt to explore K’ang-Hsi’s mind by making a kind of jigsaw or mosaic of the Emperor’s personal opinions, which are to be found scattered here and there in the official documents of the period, and arranging them under headings such as ...”

“... that the morphology of male genitalia, which might encourage spurious sexist claims for the self-generated architectural grandeur of the male genitals, is actually a manifestation of the exercise of female choice. My big beautiful erection is her doing. Furthermore, both Kevles and Eberhard are aware that the hidden internal site for most female animal ...”

“... convictions, manifested by a written constitution whose truths all good citizens had to accept as self-evident. Some of them, hardening into a blind or blindfolded faith in ‘free enterprise’, or capitalism, have come to appear a good deal less so; perhaps for analogous reasons, the utility of the ‘culture’ concept has been coming under question, and ...”

“... argue that as collectors of beautiful objects over time their families were thinking not merely of self-interest but of the national herutage.’ But as a historian who likes to keep his cards close to his chest, he does not disclose whether he finds this to be pathos, bathos or humbug. The evidence, and especially the lack of evidence, about the process of ...”

“... the smooth assurance he was ‘incessantly uncomfortable’ about himself. Social and artistic self-doubt seem to have been curiously mingled. He confessed near the end of his life that he had ‘never been part and parcel of the England he has loved’; told Ford Madox Ford (if the latter, so often untrustworthy, is to be believed) that he had never been ...”

“... citizens to cheat, to lie, to fake the results of experiments, and to practise delusion – and self-delusion – on a scale which has almost become institutional? Second, why does society pay so much credulous attention to them? Is it really ‘normal’ for the rest of us to treat tricksters, hysterics, charlatans and practical jokers as if they were ...”

“... to be in the intentional state I am in’ into the intentional state itself, thus making the state self-referential. If we do so, we shall be able to be internalists. We can continue to assert, pace Kripke and Putnam, that ‘meanings are in the head.’ We can continue to say, with Frege, that sense determines reference, because our sense of what a sense is ...”

“... weight. (Kundera reminds us that the rise of the novel is both the expression of ever-increasing self-consciousness, and its antidote. By representing ourselves in fictions we escape from the unbearable insubstantiality of awareness. In Cartesian formula: we create the Archers, therefore we exist.) Kundera has always been a flashy writer, his chief interest ...”

“... end too effectively. Sir Angus knows why. The true occasion of Bernard Sands’s fatal access of self-knowledge – of the sadistic component, that is, in his sexual nature – comes to him in the manner of his reaction to an incident in Leicester Square at night. What Sir Angus calls the ‘strong narrating side’ of the novel lies here, and the illstarred ...”