a problem that presents itself as a dilemma carries an unfortunate prescription: to argue instead of act.

If history is really relevant in today's world, the proposition doesn't command much respect. Perhaps the past is a different country, but if so no one much wants to travel there.

How can you communicate your thoughts or demonstrate your hypotheses by conventional means when all the values and standards that you want to challenge are built into those means? Science and new technology today like to declare that they encourage 'lateral thinking,' new ways of seeing and putting data together - but all systems have an inbuilt resistance to what has not been programmed into them through the premises on which their rules are based.

Great writers leave us not just their works, but a way of looking at things.

Unless I am what I am and feel what I feel - as hard as I can and as honestly and truly as I can - then I am nothing. Let me feel guilty ... don't try to educate me ... don't protect me.

it is through the ghost [writer] that the great gift of knowledge which the inarticulate have for the world can be made available.

I am not sure how many "sins" I would recognize in the world. Some would surely be defused by changed circumstances. But I can imagine none that is more irredeemably sinful than the betrayal, the exploitation, of the young by those who should care for them.