Who invented political tolerance? The English invented it, it's something which has taken roots with some difficulty in Scottish politics.

- Neal Ascherson

English stupidity is an organism so primitive that it is apparently impossible to kill off. It reminds me of Physarum Polycephalum, the gigantic slim…

- Neal Ascherson

The way that words mutate reminds me of fashions in music. The word--the note--is a constant. But the setting and chord in which it occurs alters wit…

- Neal Ascherson

Broadly speaking, most people lived their lives in a kind of unwilling conformity. The thing was that they were offered, as time went by, various kin…

- Neal Ascherson

It was a real revolution. But with one missing feature. That is the feeling in a people that "We have done it once, and if the new lot let us down, w…

- Neal Ascherson

Darwinism did not strip meaning from the world but intensified it, 'by identifying it in as many aspects of life as possible'.

- Neal Ascherson

Well, if there is a spectrum between ethnic and civic forms of nationalism, which is a rather schematic way of looking at it, all nationalism contain…

- Neal Ascherson

There are many kinds of revelation. But the most powerful is the vision which transcends the mental boundary between life and non-life, and Scotland …

- Neal Ascherson

History--the product, not the raw material--is a bottle with a label. For many years now, the emphasis of historical discussion has been laid upon th…

- Neal Ascherson