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

There is a perennial and unobtrusive view that morality consists in such things as telling the truth, paying one's debts, respecting one's parents and doing no voluntary harm to anyone. Those are all things easy to say and hard to do; they do not attract much attention, and win little honor in the world.

Human nature must not be altered in order to have a problem-free world. Man is not just a problem-solving being, as behaviorists would wish us to believe, but a problem-recognizing and -accepting being.

The students [of the 60's] substituted conspicuous compassion for their parents' conspicuous consumption.

It may well be that a societys greatest madness seems normal to itself.

The substance of my being has been informed by the books I learned to care for.

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