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.

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

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

This nation's impulse is toward the future, and tradition seems more of a shackle to it than an inspiration.

Students now arrive at the university ignorant and cynical about our political heritage, lacking the wherewithal to be either inspired by it or seriously critical of it.

Education is the movement from darkness to light.

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