Often, economists spend their energies squabbling with one another, but arguably the more important contrast is between our broadly liberal economic worldview and the various alternatives - common around the globe - that postulate natural hierarchies...
As economists have often pointed out, we pay doctors for quantity, not quality. As they point out less often, we also pay them as individuals, rather than as members of a team working together for their patients. Both practices have made for serious ...
When violence is real and you flinch away from it, violence does not push people to try and imitate that. Often, we shun the violence that makes us flinch, because it disturbs us. And what makes us uncomfortable and disturbs us is not often bad. What...
We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.
Few pleasures, for the true reader, rival the pleasure of browsing unhurriedly among books: old books, new books, library books, other people's books, one's own books - it does not matter whose or where. Simply to be among books, glancing at one here...
I often traveled to Nicaragua to speak against repressive policies by the Sandinista government.
Man does not necessarily begin with despotism because he is barbarous, but very often finds his way to despotism because he is civilised. He finds it because he is experienced; or, what is often much the same thing, because he is exhausted
When I was painting in art school - and I think many painters in the 1980s worked similarly - a finished painting would often be constructed from lots of other paintings underneath. Some of these individual layers of painting were better than others,...
It is supposed that power corrupts,' the caterpillar said in a voice as untroubled as time itself. "yet the powerful are often corrupt before they are powerful. In fact, I find that they too often become powerful by being corrupt. Whether real or per...
Some people think emotionally more often than they think politically. Some think politically more often than they think rationally. Others never think rationally about anything at all. No judgment implied. Just an observation.
This seems charmingly paradoxical: scientists seek one truth but often voice many opinions; journalists often speak of many truths while voicing a uniform view.
Our faith in others betrays that we would rather have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer. And often with our love we want merely to overcome envy. And often we attack and make ourselves enemies, to conceal that we are vulner...
I am often thought of as being remarkably bright, and yet my brains, more often than not, are busily devising new and interesting ways of bringing my enemies to sudden, gagging, writhing, agonizing death.
Metaphorically speaking, of course, if I put a problem behind my pillow and fall asleep, very often because my brain went to sleep with that idea or the problem alive, very often in the middle of the night I wake up, and I wake up with a solution or ...
Time and again, we let the fear of loss overpower rational decision-making and often make ourselves worse off just to avoid a potential loss. Psychologists call this loss aversion, and it means we often tend to prefer avoiding losses at the expense o...
Too often the word 'prayer' induces guilt because we don't do enough of it. After all, I've never met anyone who said they pray too much! All of us fall short. And we often feel like our prayers fall flat.
I try and work out as often as possible. Since I travel very often, it becomes very difficult to have a daily work out routine, but I practice yoga every day or try and play some sport. Also, I am very aware of what suits my body in terms of food and...
I think films about men are often about characters who don't want to express their feelings. You're supposed to kind of admire them for not expressing their feelings. And I feel that's a bit dull. Women's stories often have stronger emotional content...
Every so often when I'm writing, a character might actually be a distinct person in my head - often not an actor or a face, literally a person who just seems to exist in my imagination. Then the challenge is finding somebody who is close enough to th...
I often write about nonreligious people, and I try to find situations where their sense of humanity is restored or discovered. I think you can be a good person in many ways. And I think you often have to be careful that prayer can seem superficial, b...
Often in companies, you'll see tensions between sales and marketing. Sales people will want to give discounts to clients because they often get paid a commission based on how much they sell. So they're always pushing to give discounts because that wi...
