“Contra Hobbes and Locke, Rousseau refused to believe that the obligations to civil society could be derived from self-interest, the preservation of… — Pankaj Mishra Copy Share Image
Once you empower people and say,' Here you are, now you get to dream the great dream of becoming a full citizen… — Pankaj Mishra Copy Share Image
“Today, the belief in progress, necessary for life in a Godless universe, can no longer be sustained, except, perhaps, in the Silicon… — Pankaj Mishra Copy Share Image
I think the Buddha presents an image of someone who believes in self-control. I think he's offering, perhaps, a critique of the… — Pankaj Mishra Copy Share Image
The people who encouraged me weren't necessarily writers or readers themselves. They were people who were just pleased to see me devote… — Pankaj Mishra Copy Share Image
I feel that I already have the life I love and I don't see how it could be improved radically by any… — Pankaj Mishra Copy Share Image
I don't think of myself as particularly earnest. I have long bouts of cynicism and skepticism. So much of my early life… — Pankaj Mishra Copy Share Image
“In his What is to be Done? (1863), probably the worst Russian novel of the nineteenth century (and also the most influential),… — Pankaj Mishra Copy Share Image
The American writer is a very pampered figure - by foundations, by fellowships, by publishing advances. Even though I am not American,… — Pankaj Mishra Copy Share Image
There have been many instances of people combining the political life with the spiritual life, a life of constant self-examination. Gandhi was… — Pankaj Mishra Copy Share Image
“Nationalism has again become a seductive but treacherous antidote to an experience of disorder and meaninglessness: the unexpectedly rowdy anticlimax, in a densely populated… — Pankaj Mishra Copy Share Image
I feel very privileged to get to read and write and not to have to do things that I don't like, and I don't… — Pankaj Mishra Copy Share Image
There was great political uncertainty in South Asia at the time of the Buddha. The older small tribal societies were cracking up and gave… — Pankaj Mishra Copy Share Image
Our tolerance of the intolerable found a low threshold as early as the late 1950s with the grotesque excesses of McCarthyism, which destroyed so… — Pankaj Mishra Copy Share Image
“As Keynes wrote, with devastating understatement, ‘The age of economic internationalism was not particularly successful in avoiding war.” — Pankaj Mishra Copy Share Image
“Voltaire was soon turned, with Catherine’s encouragement, into a patron saint for the secular Russian aristocracy. Voltairianism, vaguely signifying rationalism, scepticism and reformism, became… — Pankaj Mishra Copy Share Image
“Today, the belief in progress, necessary for life in a Godless universe, can no longer be sustained, except, perhaps, in the Silicon Valley mansions… — Pankaj Mishra Copy Share Image
We are always boosting or trying to prop up the ego by fulfilling some desire or other, and always craving affirmation from the outside. — Pankaj Mishra Copy Share Image
I don't think of myself as particularly earnest. I have long bouts of cynicism and skepticism. So much of my early life was full… — Pankaj Mishra Copy Share Image
“Marx reproduced medieval and Reformation millenarian expectations in his utopia of a classless, stateless society.” — Pankaj Mishra Copy Share Image
