"How will Hong Kong, freshly and profoundly dependent on China, define itself? Will it be eclipsed by Shanghai and Beijing or evolve a distinctive cultural identity?... Official Web sites, as well as banners, buses and billboards across the city, declare Hong Kong "Asia's world city." There may be some truth in this. Shanghai and Beijing are, despite their glossy Western veneers, profoundly Chinese cities, marked by vast hinterlands and dominated by Mandarin speakers. I have never felt anything but a foreigner in them, whereas Hong Kong, whose economic foundations were laid by foreign businessmen and Chinese fleeing war and revolution on the mainland, has always struck me as the New World to China's Old, the place where new, plural identities are possible."

-- Pankaj Mishra, "Hong Kong's Moment", T: The New York Times Style Magazine

"While Socrates and minds of his stamp may be able to acquire virtue through reason, mankind would long ago have ceased to be if its preservation had depended solely on the reasonings of those who make it up."

-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men

"How can we get more organs? By redefining death."

-- William Saletan, "Undead Babies: The Retreating Boundaries of Organ Harvesting", Slate

"We say we want a renewal of character in our day but we don't really know what we ask for. To have a renewal of character is to have a renewal of a creedal order that constrains, limits, binds, obligates, and compels. This price is too high for us to pay. We want character but without unyielding conviction; we want strong morality but without the emotional burden of guilt or shame; we want virtue but without particular moral justifications that invariably offend; we want good without having to name evil; we want decency without the authority to insist upon it; we want moral community without any limitation to personal freedom. In short, we want what we cannot possibly have on the terms that we want it."

-- James Davison Hunter, The Death of Character: Moral Education in an Age Without Good Or Evil

"I don't consider myself a Chicagoan. I consider myself a Hyde Parker."

-- Richard Epstein, in "Uncommon Ground", The Washington Post

"Knowing that his audiences are capable of forming bad impressions of him, the individual may come to feel ashamed of a well-intentioned honest act merely because the context of its performance provides false impressions that are bad. Feeling this unwarranted shame, he may feel that his feelings can be seen; feeling that he can be seen, he may feel that his appearance confirms these false conclusions concerning him. He may then add to the precariousness of his position by engaging in just those defensive maneuvers that he would employ were he really guilty. In this way it is possible for all of us to become fleetingly for ourselves the worst person we can imagine that others might imagine us to be."

-- Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Angkor, Cambodia

"There are indeed things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical."

-- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus