The cultural and political strands of change could not be separated, any more than during the turbulence of revolution and romanticism of 1790–1830. … - Paul Johnson

Descartes’ dictum: ‘There is nothing so absurd or incredible that it has not been asserted by one philosopher or another.

Jews who became socialists in the nineteenth century and who attacked the unequal distribution of wealth produced by liberal, laissez-faire capitalism were expressing in contemporary language Jewish principles which were 3,000 years old and which had become part of the instincts of the people.

It is the nature of the Hindu religion to be tolerant and, in its own curious way, permissive. Under the socialist regime of Jawaharlal Nehru and his family successors the state was intolerant, restrictive and grotesquely bureaucratic. That has largely changed (though much bureaucracy remains), and the natural tolerance of the Hindu mind-set has replaced quasi-Marxist rigidity.