Happiness is a real, objective phenomenon, scientifically verifiable. That means people and whole societies can now be measured over time and compared accurately with one another. Causes and cures for unhappiness can be quantified. – Polly Toynbee
There is all the difference in the world between teaching children about religion and handing them over to be taught by the religious. – Polly Toynbee
It is now possible to quantify peoples levels of happiness pretty accurately by asking them, by observation, and by measuring electrical activity in the brain, in degrees from terrible pain to sublime joy. – Polly Toynbee
But how odd that in this heathen nation of empty pews, where churches bare, ruined choirs are converted into luxury loft living, a Labour government – yes, a Labour government – is deliberately creating a huge expansion of faith schools. – Polly Toynbee
All of us have had the experience of a sudden joy that came when nothing in the world had forewarned us of its coming — a joy so thrilling that if it was born of misery we remembered even the misery with tenderness. – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939, translated from Frenc