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

A serious life means being fully aware of the alternatives, thinking about them with all the intensity one brings to bear on life-and-death questions, in full recognition that every choice is a great risk with necessary consequences that are hard to bear.

The sirens sing sotto voce these days, and the young already have enough wax in their ears to pass them by without danger.

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

The artist is the most interesting of all phenomena, for he represents creativity, the definition of man.

Culture as art is the peak expression of man's creativity, his capacity to break out of nature's narrow bounds, and hence out of the degrading interpretation of man in modern natural and political science.

[A]ny notion of the serious life of leisure, as well as men's taste and capacity to live it, had disappeared. Leisure became entertainment.