To shoot a man because one disagrees with his interpretation of Darwin or Hegel is a sinister tribute to the supremacy of ideas in human affairs -- but a tribute nevertheless.

Men are accomplices to that which leaves them indifferent.

To ask larger questions is to risk getting things wrong. Not to ask them at all is to constrain the life of understanding

Every one of my opponents, every one of my critics, will tell you that I am a generalist spread far too thin in an age when this is not done anymore, when responsible knowledge is specialized knowledge.

It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past.

I believe that a work of art, like metaphors in language, can ask the most serious, difficult questions in a way which really makes the readers answer for themselves; that the work of art far more than an essay or a tract involves the reader, challenges him directly and brings him into the argument.

If there is a chronic infirmity by which every teacher ought to be afflicted, it is, indeed, hope.