Do you know that one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas.

Do you know, one of the greatest problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas? Now, thoughts and ideas, that interests me.

We live in an age when to be young and to be indifferent can be no longer synonymous.

Medieval and ancient sensibility now dominates our time as acoustic and multisensory awareness displaces the merely visual.

Every word, every line, every thought is prompted by the age we live in, with all its circumstances, its ties, its efforts, its past and present. It is impossible to act or think independently and arbitrarily. This is comforting in a way. To the individual, the collective experience of the age represents a bond – and also, in a sense, security; there will always be possibilities even in disaster.

We live in and age of hyper-awareness, our senses extend around the globe, but it's the case of aesthetic overload: our technical zeal has outstripped our psychic capacity to cope with the influx of information.

We are feelings and have human beings.

Our decisions are driven by feelings, sometimes (although not always) backed up by logic and reason.

Ninety percent of our lives is governed by emotion. Our brains merely register and act upon what is telegraphed to them by our bodily experience. Intellect is to emotion as our clothes are to our bodies; we could not very well have civilized life without clothes, but we would be in a poor way if we had only clothes without bodies.

We are born with the sensibility of a period of civilization. We are not masters of our production; it is imposed upon us.

Ours is a decidedly non-philosophical, even anti-philosophical, age. This is not to say that we lack "philosophers," of a certain sort; indeed, we have only too many. ... While it may be the case that our age is more cerebral, more abstract, more preoccupied with brain power, with intellectual capacities and skills, than any other age in history, it remains true that we are not philosophical. Indeed, our very abstraction and preoccupation with intelligence is a sign of the "forgetfulness" of philosophy.

We are often taught we have no control over our “feelings.” Yet most of us accept that we choose our actions, that intention and will inform what we do. We also accept that our actions have consequences.

A new generation is growing up in our midst, a generation actuated by new ideas and new principles. It is serious and enthusiastic for these new ideas and its enthusiasm, even when it is misdirected, is, I believe, in the main sincere. But we are living in a sceptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age: and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated or hypereducated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humour which belonged to an older day.

The spirit of our age is one in which the prejudices of the past are put behind us, where our diversity is our strength. It is this which is under attack. Moderates are not moderate through weakness but through strength. Now is the time to show it in defence of our common values.