The act of writing is an act of optimism. You would not take the trouble to do it if you felt it didn't matter.

The world is not a puzzle to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.

Geology doesn't compromise, and neither should our standards.

最成功的企业是那些以人为本的企业。

Every seed we plant today is a promise to future generations.

Is there any relief from some of thesepressures that I've been outlining? I think there is. I just want to turn to afew of them. Let's take meritocracy. This idea that everybody deserves to getwhere they get to, I think it's a crazy idea, completely crazy. I will support any politician of Left and Right, with any halfway-decent meritocratic idea; I am a meritocrat in that sense. But I think it's insane to believe that we will ever make a society that is genuinely meritocratic; it's an impossible dream.

The past is not for living in; it is a well of conclusions from which we draw in order to act.