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“Abjuring love? Real people don’t do that. Now you’re the one who sounds like someone on a stage. That’s not the real world. Real people follow their hearts, wherever it takes them. Real people refuse to be put into a little tiny box. You can say you love me or you don’t love me, it doesn’t matter; I know you have foresworn nothing except an existence you found intolerable.”

She really did smile this time. “Now you’re making me sound like a heroine. Be honest, Lucius. For all that you go on about the real world with its real people, you don’t really want to live in it, either.”

“You founded the place. Why don’t you want to go?”

“I don’t like children,” the duke replied.

“Then why put out all that money to preserve them?”

“Because it is wrong to let them die.”

In a city where most of the wealth is controlled by a small few, certain things are overlooked, particularly when it comes to the assertion of privilege.

The superior man has three things in which he delights, and to be ruler over the kingdom is not one of them. That his father and mother are both alive, and that the condition of his brothers affords no cause for anxiety;—this is one delight. That, when looking up, he has no occasion for shame before Heaven, and, below, he has no occasion to blush before men;—this is a second delight. That he can get from the whole kingdom the most talented individuals, and teach and nourish them;—this is the third delight.

How did thinking that benefited the few gain the acceptance of the many?

I have never forgotten how the deprivation of work erodes human beings, those not working and those related to them. And from that time on, I loathed an economic that could put a huge part of its workforce on the streets with no compunction.

The sense of mercy is found in all men; the sense of shame is found in all men; the sense of respect is found in all men; the sense of right and wrong is found in all men.

Those who are humane achieve glory. Those who are inhumane suffer disgrace.

If you let people follow their feelings, they will be able to do good. This is what is meant by saying that human nature is good.

The way of learning is none other than finding the lost mind.

My university education had been a shallow and superficial enterprise. The central driving forces of the economy I lived in were either ignored or left vague, to the point of meaningless.

We are at an extraordinary moment in human history: never before has the possibility of true democracy been so close to realisation. At the cost of publishing and duplication has dropped to near zero, a truly free press, and a truly informed public, becomes a reality. A new Information Enlightment is dawning where knowledge flows freely, beyond national boundaries. Technology is breaking down traditional social barriers of status, class, power, wealth and geography, replacing them with an ethos of collaboration and transparency. In this new Enlightenment it isn't just scientific truths that are the goal, but discovering truths about the way we live, about politics and power.