Editors

"Love is the most difficult test we each will face. It's the highest testimony of ourselves; everything else in our lives is all preparation for this supreme challenge."

"Both philosophy and literature have helped me to put things into perspective. They gave me the strength to be myself. I found colleagues, I felt understood through hardships in life. When I was able to express myself and be in touch with great thinkers, I would always feel safe."

"Robert Maggiori was my philosophy teacher in high school and it changed the way I looked at life and dealt with my own intensity. Further, philosophy quietened my anxieties and gave me guidance. I continued studying philosophy while at the Sciences Po Doctoral School. As time went on it played an even bigger, brighter, role in my life. It became evident that gathering talented people sharing a common passion for the discipline was the next step forward. Yet, I had bigger ambitions than creating a simple prize. My vision was to anchor year-round philosophy in Monaco’s cultural life and export it, as soon as I could, to Paris."

"I do not get up in the morning thinking of Nietzsche, looking at the sky, and telling myself that I am in contact with the eternal return. I do not understand philosophy in this way. Philosophy animates me and inhabits me and when one is upset by a text or a thought, one cannot compartmentalize. I live with the desire to understand. It is part of the being that I am."

"Philosophy is fundamental: it raises urgent matters and puts ethics in the foreground. Philosophy is a powerful tool to cast light on problems and find adequate solutions. Where is AI leading us? What is human today? Philosophy keeps fundamental questions alive; it is the only discipline that thrives through transmission. The more it is shared, the more powerful it becomes. Philosophy is a common language."

"I was fortunate, thanks to my mother, to have early access to culture and literature, which allowed me to forge a taste for critical thinking."

"It's not that I do not like feminism, but what interests me is the dialogue between the feminine and the masculine. We are not going to wage a war of the sexes! The singularity of each must be made possible. Obviously, it is sometimes more complex for women to build a singular destiny."

"It is key that we address the question of hospitality today: it means reassessing the notions of borders (especially those of a democratic Europe); the acceptance of strangers and refugees; and the question of knowledge, to name just a few. But without a ‘house for philosophy’ that opens its doors to all ways of thinking, we couldn’t achieve as much. A house is both a meeting point and an anchor; solid ground to start building on."

"Loneliness, I felt it early enough, adolescent, and this is what prompted me to introspection, especially since I had a temperament that inclined me to analysis. Later, the company of philosophers gave me the impression that I was not alone. I think this is more a matter of my personal sensitivity than of the fact that I come from a family indeed a little particular."

"Anxiety and existential anguish are part of everyone's life. My personal experience has been of sad events, such as my father's early death, but these are things that happen to everyone, no matter where he comes from."

"In the end, however, the success of a rebellion depends on the crossing of a fear barrier by enough people, not simply the small group of dedicated dissidents. A judgment that the risk is worth it and the rebellion might actually succeed. [...] It is at this point, when fear is gone, that whole nations say no. And it is when tyrants fall."

"At its simplest, "coup-proofing" is the way in which regimes consolidate a small mafia-like inner core made up of cronies, family, tribal or ethnic interest while using incentives to encourage the security forces, both military and police, to protect the regime while monitoring each other. The unintended consequence of this, however, is paranoid, inward-looking and detached regimes often isolated from the reality of what their people think, reinforced in their own view of their invulnerability and importance by a cadre of yes-men. This, perhaps, explains why dictatorial regimes, regarded as stable and invulnerable by outside observers can collapse as quickly as they can, not least when a key element like the military - as happened in Egypt and Tunisia - removed its support."

"The growing confrontation in the Gulf between the US and its Saudi-led allies on one side and Iran and its proxies on the other is now focused on the spate of recent mine attacks on oil tankers, which have been blamed by the US on . This is a standoff that has been coming. It is incontestable that Iran has been guilty of destabilising overreach in the Middle East in recent years, as it has moved to build a crescent of Shia influence from Damascus to Baghdad and Lebanon to Yemen. But Iran’s actions can hardly be said to have occurred in a vacuum. [...] In tandem with the US moves, Saudi Arabia – one of the countries seen as pushing US policy – has increased its oil production to sell to former buyers of Iranian oil, while at the same time vocally supporting moves to strangle . It is not hard, then, to see how these moves might be viewed in Tehran: as part of an escalating offensive from multiple sources threatening its own home front in a campaign of designed to weaken the regime. The , John Bolton, has been an advocate of regime change in Iran in the past. [...] All of which suggests that far from being the work of an irrational actor on the world stage, the recent attacks on the oil tankers are entirely explicable: a calculated demonstration of the vulnerability of the flow of oil to the world’s biggest economies, including to the EU, India and China. So should the attacks be interpreted as a sign of Iran’s desperation, or as evidence that Tehran has internalised the idea that it is dealing with a weak US administration with little international support for its policies in the Gulf, and is gaming its response accordingly? If the answer is the latter, then that is a judgment which has been encouraged by the wildly inconsistent messaging from Trump himself. The US president has appeared to threaten conflict and then just as quickly rule it out. The tanker attacks – if proved to be the work of Iran – are serious. But they would not represent the most potent move available to Tehran in this standoff. That remains the prospect of the country restarting uranium enrichment beyond the limits agreed in the JCPOA, a move it has already threatened, and which would inevitably trigger an in which the US would be only one actor and Europe would inevitably become embroiled. Clues as to where the crisis goes from here might be found in asking who has most to lose. For Iran’s leadership, for which the survival of the clerical regime is an existential priority that looms above all others, capitulation on US-Saudi terms would not appear to be an option. The depth of the US stake in this increasingly dangerous game is far harder to judge, given the usual confusion of Trump’s flip-flopping and the machinations of Bolton, who may be freelancing his own agenda. All of which leaves us to contemplate the most frightening element of all in a complex crisis: that the current occupant of the White House lacks any of the skills required to successfully defuse it."

"is not remembered much outside Romania these days. Now 58 and the bishop of , in March 1989 he was a parish priest in Timosoara facing eviction from his church apartment. His crime was to have preached against the policy of "systemisation" - the restructuring of his country's towns and villages ordered by the authoritarian regime of Nicolae Ceausescu. Ethnically Hungarian, Tökés had a long history of criticising the regime and so when he refused to quit his home, it became a cause célèbre and drew the attention of Ceausescu's secret police, the notorious Securitate. By December 1989, it was not only his parishioners who were standing guard to protect his flat, linking hands around the property, but ethnic Romanians who swelled into a crowd that filled the surrounding streets. What followed over the next few days is better known than Tökés 's personal tale: the mass protests in Timosoara which led, in quick order, to the fall of the once-mighty Ceausescu regime. If this story of one man and his country sounds familiar, that is perhaps because it is."

"A large part of the problem of understanding how modern rebellions come about is the reporting of them. Euphoric moments are condensed to slogans on one hand and on the other into vivid narratives of the crimes of the fallen regime. What falls through the cracks is the process by which the actions of an often small dissident circle are translated into a mass movement involving a sufficient cross-section of society to sweep away a tyrant. If that clouds our understanding, so too does the tendency to limit our examination of rebellions to the facts of the revolutionary moment itself. Instead, what we should be doing is examining why populations ever accept dictatorships. In doing so, we may comprehend more about why they are then rejected, often so suddenly."

"Quand les libéraux sont au pouvoir, nous leur demandons la liberté, parce que c’est leur principe, et, quand nous sommes au pouvoir, nous la leur refusons, parce que c’est le nôtre"

"It is easy to see where North America stands at present, and whither it is tending. Its rapid progress, due to the most degrading works, has fascinated Europe; but the results of this progress, exclusively material, already appear. Barbarism, profligacy, general bankruptcy, systematic destruction of the native races, idiotic slavery of the conquerors, bound to the most trying and repulsive of lives under the yoke of their own machinery. America might founder in the ocean once for all, and the human race would suffer no loss thereby. Not a saint, not an artist, not a thinker has it produced, unless one may term thought the aptitude for twisting iron for the construction of freight trains. The priests who wear out their lives there cannot create a civilization. Thus far there is no civilization in America, and as far as appearances go, there never will be."

"Newspapers have become such a danger that it is necessary to create many. You cannot contend against the Press, except through its multitude. Add flood to flood, and let them drown one another, forming no more than a swamp, or, if you will, a sea. The swamp has its lagoons, the sea its moments of slumber. We will see whether it is possible to build some Venice within it."

"When I voted, my equality tumbled into the box with my ballot; they disappeared together."

"If I could re-establish a class of nobles, I should do so at once, and I would not belong to it."

"Amongst the amusements of Paris must be counted duels between journalists."

"Chi non vede che la colpa di questo ritorno all'età ferina non è dei soldati che nel furor della lotta diventano barbari e feroci, ma di quelle potenze e di quei governi che, tenendo schiavi popoli anelanti a libertà, rendono le guerre inevitabili?"

"Your eyes only see what your mind lets you believe!"

"He’d carefully judged the measure of his opponent’s resolve, and knew that a man as greedy and weak willed as Marcus James would always be the one to crack first under duress."

"Wil had learned as a child that the best way to deal with goons—the more muscle-bound the better—was to confuse them. For while the human bicep was something anyone with a little patience could build up to an impressive size, the human brain was less a variable and more something a person was born with. Goons, in his experience, were rarely born with very large ones."

"He began to think of better days, all of which lay in the opposite direction from the one he was facing."

"Life is not about how you use your eyes; it’s about having vision."

"He stopped in his tracks to consider what might be Actually Occurring, as opposed to Apparently Occurring."

"Ignoring the old man, Wil reasoned, was the first step to figuring him out."

"Wil Morgan awoke from his regular anxiety dream, in which he had just finished second in a World’s Biggest Failure competition."

"It was apparent that he was out of his league, and that the only way to compete would be to play along until everyone reverted to ignoring him. At that point, he’d be able to slip out the back door and return to his previously scheduled life."

"The cat leaned into Wil’s leg and rubbed a little bit, just to let Wil know that he had officially been given permission to exist."

"He was also willing to bet that not a single part of his next three or four minutes was going to make any sense, yet somehow it would all fit quite neatly into Mrs. Chappell’s version of reality."

"Outside, the city streets were gray and sodden. Indeed, Wil often fancied this was the city where they had invented the color gray."

"“I see where you’re going with this, Wil. Bravo!” “Do you?” replied Wil. “Because honestly, Mr. Dinsdale, if you know where I’m going, perhaps you’d be kind enough to give me directions!”"

"The Quantum Needle was theoretically used to repair any tears in the fabric of the space-time continuum, though how it actually worked in the field was a matter of some debate. When Wil had pressed the question, Mr. Dinsdale had simply mumbled, “quantum physics,” which seemed to be his standard response to any question he didn’t know the answer to."

"You know, Mr. Dinsdale, this all sounds delightfully bananas but I’m kinda monkeyed out this week."

"“Wil,” said Barry with a weight of sadness that only a parent can know, “I tried as hard as I could.”"

"We all know that life isn’t fair. But life should at least come with a printed copy in large type in case of misunderstandings and overbilling."

"His museum took a stance against conventional thinking, and the slow death of intellect that comes with mediocrity."

"That’s it! That’s the utterly random mental chaos I was looking for! No one’s going to predict that response! Anything Else?"

"Wil knew that he had done something that might never be undone: his Dad might forgive the years of lies, but he would never forgive this one moment of absolute truth."

"Hindsight would later suggest to Wil that things coincidentally began to fall down at exactly the same time he began to relax. He wasn’t to know this at the time, of course. Otherwise it would’ve been foresight."

"But even a man who has paid his rent doesn’t have forever."

"Wil opened his eyes to find Thursday glaring in at him through his window; apparently, the universe was already in a foul mood."

"Wil allowed his voice to trail off. The chances of a rational explanation at this point were in exact proportion to the chances of Lucy believing it."

"Wil had always been a hopeless romantic, with “hopeless” being the operative word."

"There was evidence of neither angels nor ambulance workers, which Wil took to be a positive sign."

"The next morning, Wil Morgan awoke from a fitful night’s sleep and a rather disturbing variation of his anxiety dream in which he’d arrived too late to register for the World’s Biggest Failure competition and had been disqualified."

"Wil tried a vacant stare, just to see if he could beat the old lady at her own game."