There's a certain pleasure of the life of the mind that cannot be denied. There's a certain pleasure about being around people who enact a playfulness when it comes to the world of ideas.

There is no such thing as institutional conditions without any individual actions and no such thing as individual action without institutional conditions. So there is always personal responsibility.

It's true that in reading an interview, I have a little critique of the objectification of women in a [Playboy] magazine that is perceived to doing that.

Greatness is telling the truth & being courageous in pursuit of justice. The worst thing you could tell young people is to be successful but become well-adjusted to an unjust status quo as opposed to being great & being maladjusted to an unjust status quo.

If you've got on the one hand death, dogmatism, domination, and on the other you've got desire in the face of death, dialogue in the face of dogmatism, democracy in the face of domination, then philosophy itself becomes a critical disposition of wrestling with desire in the face of death, wrestling with dialogue in the face of dogmatism, and wrestling with democracy, trying to keep alive a very fragile democratic experiment.

I have a whole lot of fun in trying to serve others and just keeping it funky, trying to keep it real, trying to ensure that we are able to be ourselves and get beyond these deodorized discourses and deodorized spaces that put on masks.

This is what it is for Asians to be part of - support affirmative action, even though it may be against their interest, but they feel it's a matter of justice.