The history of philosophy is actually full of people who argue for rather wild and incredible views, and their reputations are based on the skill of arguing for them.

The fundamental question of political philosophy, one that precedes questions about how the state should be organized, is whether there should be any state at all. Why not have anarchy?

It is, from another angle, an attack on requiring proof in philosophy. And it's also the case, I guess, that my temperament is to like interesting, new, bold ideas, and to try and generate them.

I think philosophers can do things akin to theoretical scientists, in that, having read about empirical data, they too can think of what hypotheses and theories might account for that data. So there's a continuity between philosophy and science in that way.

We know that if you educate a girl, as the saying goes, you educate a nation. That girl will get married later, she will have fewer children, she's more likely to earn an income, and that income is more likely to be plowed back into the family so that the family benefits.

My own aunt was Merle Oberon, so movie stardom was not a faraway mystery to me as a child: it was part of the family business.

My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim.

I did grow up in a military family but lacked the perspective to grasp the cognitive dissonance carried by most people who serve in the armed forces or the circumstances that push lots of folks into the military. I don't blame G.I. Joe or Rambo for that atmosphere, but they certainly reflected the final stage of a two generation cultural myth.