We are living in 1937, and our universities, I suggest, are not half-way out of the fifteenth century. We have made hardly any changes in our conception of university organization, education, graduation, for a century - for several centuries.

A world revolution to a higher social order, a world order, or utter downfall lies before us all.

The greatest task of democracy, its ritual and feast - is choice.

We're in a blessed drainpipe, and we've got to crawl along it till we die.

The crisis [the Great Depression] discovered a great man in Franklin Roosevelt...None too soon he has carried America forward to the second stage of democratic realization. His New Deal involves such collective controls of the national business that it would be absurd to call it anything but socialism, were it not for a prejudice lingering on from the old individualist days against that word...Both Roosevelt and Stalin were attempting to produce a huge, modern, scientifically organized, socialist state, the one out of a warning crisis and the other out of a chaos.

Losing your way on a journey is unfortunate. But, losing your reason for the journey is a fate more cruel.

One believes in Stephen Dedalus as one believes in few characters in fiction.