The citizen's job is to be rude - to pierce the comfort of professional intercourse by boorish expressions of doubt.

Only when God was said to have died did various leaders, professions and sectors risk pushing themselves forward as successors.

The 19th-century pure capitalist model of society was a pyramid, concentrations of enormous wealth in a small group at the top, a not very big middle-class in the middle, and an enormous percentage of the population in the bottom part of the pyramid.

The merger mania which goes on and on and on is the sign of the disappearance of competition. As we deregulate, the mergers increase, which means there's less and less competition. At the national level, at the regional level, but also at the international level.

Thinking you're a genius is death.

Keep your chin up, and don't go to the funeral - mine or yours or your loved one's - until the day of the funeral because then you miss the life that you have left.

In short, all things that please the natural man in this world, are, to a true Christian, only so many crosses and temptations, allurements of sin and snares of death, that continually exercise his virtue.

A surgeon is surrounded by people who are sick, discouraged, afraid, embittered, dying - but also courageous, loving, wise, compassionate and alive.