The facile economic and psychological debunking of the theoretical life cannot do away with its irreducible beauties.

The spirit is at home, if not entirely satisfied, in America.

Education in our times must try to find whatever there is in students that might yearn for completion, and to reconstruct the learning that would enable them autonomously to seek that completion.

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?

Children tend to be rather better observers of adults' characters than adults are of children's, because children are so dependent on adults that it is very much in their interest to discover the weaknesses of their elders.

We are like ignorant shepherds living on a site where great civilizations once flourished.

Nothing is more singular about this generation than its addiction to music.