The Republican argument that raising the debt ceiling encourages additional future spending is logically irresponsible. The debt ceiling has to be raised to authorize spending already approved by Congress. Despite that fallacy the GOP has been able to score political points with its argument.

After the Berlin Wall came down I visited that city and I will never forget it. The abandoned checkpoints. The sense of excitement about the future. The knowledge that a great continent was coming together. Healing those wounds of our history is the central story of the European Union.

Friendship can only exist between persons with similar interests and points of view. Man and woman by the conventions of society are born with different interests and different points of view.

I'm very comfortable with failure. I'm very comfortable being the guy who disappoints people.

There's something to be said for failing. It's not the failure you feel it's the failure that people project when something disappoints. You're back to ground zero where there's no expectations and that's where I like to be.

Religion points to that area of human experience where in one way or another man comes upon mystery as a summons to pilgrimage.

I find increasingly that the more extreme are the things going on in your life the more cultural reference points fail you. More mythical reference points actually help and you realise that's what myths are for. It's for human beings to process their experience in extremis.

Education is a kind of continuing dialogue and a dialogue assumes different points of view.

There is still a lot of misinformation being spread about higher education funding arrangements under the new Act. The students page on my website sets out the main points in the Act.

And the Republican Party especially associates the market with the idea of progress goodness family and points us toward the mall as an answer to all our personal dreams.