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?

Children tend to be rather better observers of adults' characters than adults are of children's, because children are so dependent on adults that it is very much in their interest to discover the weaknesses of their elders.

Every age is blind to its own worst madness.

Commitment is a word invented in our abstract modernity to signify the absence of any real motives in the soul for moral dedication.

Never did I think that the university was properly ministerial to the society around it. Rather I thought and think that society is ministerial to the university, and I bless a society that tolerates and supports an eternal childhood for some, a childhood whose playfulness can in turn be a blessing to society.

Law may prescribe that the male nipples be made equal to the female ones, but they still will not give milk.

The importance of these [college] years for an American cannot be overestimated. They are civilization's only chance to get to him.