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.

Freedom of the mind requires not only, or not even especially the absence of legal constraints but the presence of alternative thoughts.

The humanities are like the great old Paris Flea Market where, amidst masses of junk, people with a good eye found cast away treasures...They are like a refugee camp where all the geniuses driven out of their jobs and countries by unfriendly regimes are idling.

Reason transformed into prejudice is the worst form of prejudice, because reason is the only instrument for liberation from prejudice.

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

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

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