Academic environments are generally characterised by the presence of peole who claim to understand more than in fact they do. Linguistic Philosophy has produced a great revolution, generating people who claim not to understand when in fact they do. Some achieve great virtuosity at it. Any beginner in philosophy can manage not to understand, say, Hegel, but I have heard people who were so advanced that they knew how not to understand writers of such limpid clarity as Bertrand Russell or A.J. Ayer.

A cleric who loses his faith abandons his calling; a philosopher who loses his redefines his subject.

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

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

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

Just as every girl should have a husband, preferably her own, so every culture must have its state, preferably its own.

People are even more reluctant to admit that man explains nothing, than they were to admit that God explains nothing.