America was born modern; it did not have to achieve modernity, nor did it have modernity thrust upon it.

Ideas, and even the detection of errors, require more than care and caution.

It is nationalism which engenders nations, and not the other way round.

America was born modern; it did not have to achieve modernity, nor did it have modernity thrust upon it.

The production of obscurity in Paris compares to the production of motor cars in Detroit in the great period of American industry.

Nowledge which... transcends the bounds, the prejudices and prejudgements of any one society and culture is not an illusion but, on the contrary, a glorious and luminous reality. Just how it was achieved remains subject to debate.

I am deeply sensitive to the spell of nationalism. I can play about thirty Bohemian folk songs ... on my mouth-organ. My oldest friend, who is Czech and a patriot, cannot bear to hear me play them because he says I do it in such a schmalzy way, 'crying into the mouth organ'. I do not think I could have written the book on nationalism which I did write, were I not capable of crying, with the help of a little alcohol, over folk songs, which happen to be my favourite form of music.