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.

As soon as tradition has come to be recognized as tradition, it is dead.

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

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

Only Socrates knew, after a lifetime of unceasing labor, that he was ignorant. Now every high-school student knows that. How did it become so easy?

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

The liberally educated person is one who is able to resist the easy and preferred answers, not because he is obstinate but because he knows others worthy of consideration.