The challenge, then, is to take minds and hearts formed over the long millennia of living in local troops and equip them with ideas and institutions that will allow us to live together as the global tribe we have become.

There are many people of cosmopolitan temperament who are not from the elites of their societies or the world and while, for a variety of reasons, I think a cosmopolitan spirit does naturally go with city life, that's the life of a very large proportion of human beings today. And I don't think rural people can't be cosmopolitan, in my sense.

Unless you have the power to stop the government of Iran beheading teenagers for homosexual acts, there's not much to be done except deplore it unless you are willing to converse with people about why they thinking this is okay.

I started philosophy looking for answers. But along the way I came to prize exploring the questions. Progress in philosophy consists, I think, in a clearer delineation of the conceptual options, not in reaching determinate conclusions.

Conversation doesn’t have to lead to consensus about anything especially not values it’s enough that it helps people get used to one another