The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Non-Fiction

by Neil Gaiman

‘I believe that in the battle between guns and ideas, ideas will, eventually, win.’

I believe that you have the absolute right to think things that I find offensive, stupid, preposterous or dangerous, and that you have the right to speak, write or distribute these things, and that I do not have the right to kill you, maim you, hurt you or take away your liberty or property because I find your ideas threatening or insulting or downright disgusting. You probably think some of my ideas are pretty vile too.

They are about education (which is not a process that finishes the day we leave school or university),

We have an obligation to make things beautiful,

to not leave the world uglier than we found it. An obligation not to empty the oceans, not to leave our problems for the next generation. We have an obligation to clean up after ourselves, and not to leave our children with a world we’ve shortsightedly messed up, shortchanged and crippled.