Commitment is a word invented in our abstract modernity to signify the absence of any real motives in the soul for moral dedication.

Error is indeed our enemy, but it alone points to the truth and therefore deserves our respectful treatment.

We are like ignorant shepherds living on a site where great civilizations once flourished. The shepherds play with the fragments that pop up to the surface, having no notion of the beautiful structures of which they were once a part.

The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable, that removes the sense that there is an outside.

Most of all I admire Mozart's capacity to be both deep and rational, a combination often said to be impossible.

Commitment is a word invented in our abstract modernity to signify the absence of any real motives in the soul for moral dedication.

Never did I think that the university was properly ministerial to the society around it. Rather I thought and think that society is ministerial to the university, and I bless a society that tolerates and supports an eternal childhood for some, a childhood whose playfulness can in turn be a blessing to society.