Excellence is the eternal quest. We achieve it by living up to our highest intellectual standards and our finest moral intuitions. In seeking excellence, take life seriously-but never yourself!

Expelled from individual consciousness by the rush of change, history finds its revenge by stamping the collective unconsciousness with habits and values.

Almost all important questions are important precisely because they are not susceptible to quantitative answer.

Liberalism regards all absolutes with profound skepticism, including both moral imperatives and final solutions... Insistence upon any particular solution is the mark of an ideologue.

Brave men earn the right to shape their own destiny.

I don't think I have made as much of my life as I should have. I should have written more books.

Few secret undertakings ever did any nation any good.