The most important function of the university in an age of reason is to protect reason from itself.

The importance of these [college] years for an American cannot be overestimated. They are civilization's only chance to get to him.

Reason cannot establish values, and its belief that it can is the stupidest and most pernicious illusion.

Only Socrates knew, after a lifetime of unceasing labor, that he was ignorant. Now every high-school student knows that. How did it become so easy?

The humanities are like the great old Paris Flea Market where, amidst masses of junk, people with a good eye found cast away treasures...They are like a refugee camp where all the geniuses driven out of their jobs and countries by unfriendly regimes are idling.

Education is the movement from darkness to light.

Freedom of the mind requires not only, or not even especially the absence of legal constraints but the presence of alternative thoughts.