1. Corporations are the capitalist form of collectivism.

2. Modernism is dead. Long live modernity!

3. Montaigne was partly right: I can be educated and a fool, but I can also be ignorant and not wise.

4. When I see and read modern art I yell 'Just say something; don't worry about how you said it!'

5. Vultures feed on corpses left by tradition and its endless striving for prestige. We call the vultures 'modern' because they need no family pedigree.

6. To pay women for housework would incorporate the Household.

7. Socialists should have declared 'We shall never appeal to envy!'There are more votes in greed and vanity than envy.

8. Was Marxism the first sorcery to enlist our aspirations against ourselves?

9. The Spirit of the Age..... You hypocrite! You self-righteous prig!

10. Genetic engineering is threatening to make us free to be what we choose as well as free to do what we want. Ahead of that we shrank the human genome - almost to a mouse.

11. The best way to get people to take a threat seriously is to be the threat.

12. 'The Space Age is over!' cries the cynic. Of course - it's routine.

13. We don't use the word 'noble' because it was misused. We don't use the words 'progress' or 'civilisation' because they do not describe what we see.

14. 'World' in philosophy has a simple meaning. It refers just to what we experience or imagine outside (not beyond) ourselves.

15. Existentialist characters from Clarissa Harlowe onward are expected to fade out rather than fit to the world. We will have matured when we can treat them as merely wise.

16. What happened to the old German role of doing what others talk about and so making yourselves a tragedy? Americans and Muslims now share it.

17. The horror writer H.P Lovecraft died in 1937. Just a few years later he would have discovered that the Cthulu mythos was unnecessary.

18. A writing career most often depends on making a name for yourself first - once a name you sell. The logic is similar to a military career where you start as a Field Marshal and then work your way steadily down the ranks so as to retire as a private after forty years service.

19. The mystery of consciousness.... Alert! Wake up! They're coming!

20. Doctors often describe people as 'immature.' But societies are founded upon immaturity.

21. Logic and science are our oath of obedience to the Ninth Commandment: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

22. Nations are flickering images because the languages change so fast.

23. Modernists - have no fear of women being sent back home! War and competition are still with you. Technology will do the rest.

24. The art of charity is to make a decision about yourself and then forget about it.

25. Greens talk of the 'balance of Nature.' But don't we want Nature balanced?

26. I do not enjoy being ill but it gives me time to think.

27. How can we trust our languages when we do not trust one another?

28. Best pointed out that the French Revolution took honour into public ownership. Then the modern abominations of fascism and Leninism became possible, because they took the cruelty into public ownership also.

29. Wisdom needs independence. Therefore it must have influence and not power.

30. Why can't some fool explain that the point of ethical foreign policies is to train our children in ethics?

31. I won't give up my hope of a world order just because it's the best way to make money.

32. (a) A progressive is someone who says we can do what we want, and then expects us to cooperate. (b) A conservative is someone who complains we are spoilt, and then promises to give us everything we want.

33. The modern court jesters were the ones who greeted the modern revolution: Marquis de Sade and Rasputin.

34. The best model for computer software is Kafka's bureaucracy.

35. Intelligence services are most successful when it comes to making paranoia rational.

36. What is a miracle? Is it an event like our existence which appears so improbable you have to say it never happened?

37. How could we ever distinguish 'love' from sentiment, lust, passion, infatuation, or images? Why not forget it and just have the Golden Rule of ethics?

38. Positive and negative freedom are different perspectives: If I run a bar the end of licensing restrictions sets me free from controls. If I am a customer it sets me free to stay drinking through the night.

39. Must a universal morality be our last refuge?

40. What is the difference between suicide and martyrdom? Who decides which is which; the audience or the critics?

41. I suggest that science fiction should be not limit itself by attempting to be mere literature.

42. Can Americans free themselves from a choice between honest and blinkered conservatives or wise and corrupt liberals?

43. Even ordinary folks are talking a lot about trust now. Naturally - because we don't anyone or anything past the end of our noses.