There is no real education that does not respond to felt need; anything else acquired is trifling display.

There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.

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.

The self is the modern substitute for the soul.

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.

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