“... view of the state and a paternalistic view of the people, both views determined by the collective self-interest of the deep state actors themselves. There is of course truth in all this. But states – at any rate, all states that endure – have their hidden depths and, for very cogent reasons, make a point of veiling what they get up to – let’s speak ...”

“... them were local, not outsiders; and that all the British army’s efforts were being drawn into self-protection. The operation’s justification was itself; the men drew strength from protecting one another. I went out on patrol with them several times. We tramped silently through the cold looks of Gereshk market and crossed in thin-skinned vehicles the ...”

“... hostile and magically powerful element that could cover the whole earth.’ Expelling dirt is as self-defeating as it is murderous. Someone – a race, a sex – has to take the ...”

“... deemed guilty then not only do people risk nothing by acknowledging guilt (in fact, it becomes a self-regarding exercise), but the culpability of particular individuals is masked. It appears as if injustice is inevitable, beyond our control. Ironically, the idea of collective guilt enables personal irresponsibility.But Connolly went further. ‘You’re ...”

“... Said, is promoting ‘normalisation’ with the Zionist state. One BDS leader told me with eerie self-assurance that Said would have shut down the orchestra in line with BDS demands. There was even a debate within BDS about whether the Bilin protests ought to be boycotted because of the participation of Israeli Jews who might call themselves ...”

“... to carry the weight of a man who accidentally steps on the trap door. It must carry a label on self-adhesive vinyl, black on yellow, measuring 250 by 200 mm, saying DO NOT STAND ON THIS TRAP DOOR.’ Who was this far-off bureaucrat? Did a superior send him a memo telling him that there was need for a fresh trap-door instruction? Why? Were they constructing ...”

“... will say that such reactions are merely the consequence of the necessary jolt to the feelings and self-esteem of a hitherto protected elite as they are brought into ‘the real world’. But there is obviously something much deeper at work. It is the alienation from oneself that is experienced by those who are forced to describe their activities in misleading ...”

“... a small, pale girl, post-Blackpool, but I had a head stuffed full of chivalric epigrams, and the self-confidence that comes from a thorough knowledge of horsemanship and swordplay. I knew, also, so many people who were old, so many people who were dead: I belonged to their company and lineage, not to this, and I began to want to rejoin them, without the ...”

“... by Greenspan and others was unprecedented. Historically, US corporations had been largely self-financing, paying for their investments largely out of retained profits. By the end of the 1990s, however, they were borrowing at record-breaking levels (compared to output) in order to fund investment, while also financing themselves by way of equity issues ...”

“... glossy add-on to the nature of money, it actually is how money works. A decentralised, anonymous, self-verifying and completely reliable register of this sort is the biggest potential change to the money system since the Medici. It’s banking without banks, and money without money. The next several paragraphs give a short technical explanation of how bitcoin ...”

“... fired on from crowds containing women and children, and that the marines had fired back only in self-defence. I heard Donald Rumsfeld say that the fighting was the work of ‘thugs, gangs and terrorists’. I heard General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, say: ‘It’s not a Shiite uprising. Muqtada al-Sadr has a very small ...”

“... the door closed behind it. The party itself withered, becoming an enclave in the state, without self-awareness or strategic direction, so blind that it ostracised André Singer, its best thinker, for a mess of spin-doctors and pollsters, so insensible it took lucre, wherever it came from, as the condition of power. Its achievements will remain. Whether the ...”

“... prospectively by diagnosis-related groups as our Medicare programme does’ – check. ‘Self-governing NHS trusts’ – check. What seems to have happened since 1985 is that Enthoven’s ideas have become embedded in individual careers, financial aspirations and personal relationships independently of the rise and fall of parties. For ...”

“... the Terrorists and Neutralise the Insurgency; Strategic Pillar Two: Transition Iraq to Security Self-Reliance’), like the Five Pillars of Islam or Seven Pillars of Wisdom. I heard that the ‘Strategy’ contained few specific details because it was the ‘public version of a classified document’. Then I heard that there was no classified document. That ...”

“... away in Mandelson’s account of his 1998 downfall is a tortured paragraph, part confession, part self-justification, which could stand as the heart’s cry of New Labour – the agony that wells up in the soul of an ambitious, sensitive socialist who suffers because he can’t live like the hedge fund people, those people who are so much more charming than ...”