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.

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.

Once the law is broken with impunity, each man regains the right to any means he deems proper or necessary in order to defend himself against the new tyrant, the one who can break the law.

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

The spirit is at home, if not entirely satisfied, in America.

Authentic values are those by which a life can be lived, which can form a people that produces great deeds and thoughts.

Every age is blind to its own worst madness.