Everybody, all politicians on Left and Right, agree that meritocracy is a great thing, and we should all be trying to make our societies really, really meritocratic. In other words -- what is a meritocratic society? A meritocratic society is one in which, if you've got talent and energy and skill, you will get to the top, nothing should hold you back. It's a beautiful idea.

The brain has specialized networks for maintaining alertness, orienting to sensory events, and resolving conflict among responses.

仅仅活着是不够的，还需要有阳光、自由，和一点花的芬芳。

In a way, I've got some bad news, particularly to anybody who's come to Oxford from abroad. There's a real problem with snobbery, because sometimes people from outside the U.K. imagine that snobbery is a distinctively U.K. phenomenon, fixated on country houses and titles. The bad news is that's not true. Snobbery is a global phenomenon; we area global organization, this is a global phenomenon. What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you, and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.

The dead are our silent partners in the search for truth.

The farmer is the cornerstone of our civilization.

文学是将文字转化为情感和经历的艺术。