Will we ever again be able to view a public object with civic dignity, unencumbered by commercial messages? Must city buses be fully painted as movable ads, lampposts smothered, taxis festooned, even seats in concert halls sold one by one to donors and embellished in perpetuity with their names on silver plaques?

Natural historians tend to avoid tendentious preaching in this philosophical mode (although I often fall victim to such temptations in these essays). Our favor…

The skein of human continuity must often become this tenuous across the centuries (hanging by a thread, in the old cliche), but the circle remains unbroken if …

I am willing to believe that my unobtainable sixty seconds within a sponge or a flatworm might not reveal any mental acuity that I would care to call conscious…

There will presently be no room in the world for things; it will be filled up with the advertisements of things.

Stand us against a wall and shoot us, well and good, you are victors. But why should I be brought before a Tribunal like a c-c-c-... I can't even get the word …

The truth [is] that there is only one terminal dignity - love. And the story of love is not important - what is important is that one is capable of love. It is…