“Society, civilized society at least, is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating.”

“I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely.”

“Famine was the mark of a maturing agricultural society, the very badge of civilization.”

“I have no argument with those who see in organized religion a template or an imperative to live life according to a prescribed set of beliefs. Just give others the room, within the laws of civil society, to believe or not believe whatever they like.”

“We all search for our meaning, and if we do not find meaning in who we are or what we do, we often search outside ourselves for someone to tell us both, sometimes to the detriment of ourselves and the larger society...”

“Imperial and colonial attitudes still define the terms 'civilized world,' 'international community' and 'civil society.' Balkan people were never too impressed by civilization. As early as 1871, the founder of the Balkan socialist movement, Svetozar Marković, ridiculed the entire 'civilized world,' from Times to the obedient Serbian press. The civilized world, he wrote, 'was composed of rich Englishmen, Brussels ministers and their deputies (the representatives of the capitalists), the European rulers and their marshals, generals, and other magnates, Viennese bankers and Belegrade journalists'...[he] believed...in a pluricultural Balkan Federation organized as a decentralized, directly demotractic society based on local agricultural and industrial associations. This is the kind of antinomian imagination that needs to be rediscovered: a horizontalist tradition of the barbarians who never accepted the civilized world that is now collapsing. (p.44)”