Institutions develop because people put a lot of trust in them they meet real needs they represent important aspirations whether it's monasteries media or banks people begin by trusting these institutions and gradually the suspicion develops that actually they're working for themselves not for the community.

The most absurd and reckless aspirations have sometimes led to extraordinary success.

We must not however be like the leaders of the great romantic revolt who in their eagerness to get rid of the husk of convention disregarded also the humane aspiration.

Democracy may have arisen in the West as the way of striving for the universal aspiration to dignity and freedom but it isn't alien to the underlying concepts that infuse religion and moral philosophy everywhere.

Selfishness is the only real atheism aspiration unselfishness the only real religion.

Imagine a civilisation that's way in advance of us wants to communicate with us and assist us in our development. The information we provide to them must reflect our highest aspirations and ideals and not just be some crazy person's bizarre politics or religion.

Once you start saying 'Let's talk political my own politics my own aspirations ' it can become not just distracting in that it takes time but it can become confusing and frustrating and is this now a political agenda or a governmental agenda.

What drew me to politics in the first place was the fact that I wanted to have a place to take a stand and use my voice to express what I believed in. But I've no longer got any political aspirations. I feel that as a politician fifty per cent of people would hate you before you even left the house.

If poetry should address itself to the same needs and aspirations the same hopes and fears to which the Bible addresses itself it might rival it in distribution.

Fathers and mothers have lost the idea that the highest aspiration they might have for their children is for them to be wise... specialized competence and success are all that they can imagine.