The case against the notion of historical objectivity is like the case against international law, or international morality; that it does not exist.

The most passionate, consistent, extreme and implacable enemy of the Enlightenment and ... all forms of rationalism ... was Johann Georg Hamann. His influence, direct and indirect, upon the romantic revolt against universalism and scientific method ... was considerable and perhaps crucial.

True knowledge is knowledge of why things are as they are, and not merely what they are.

The first people totalitarians destroy or silence are men of ideas and free minds.

Conformities are called for much more eagerly today than yesterday... skeptics, liberals, individuals with a taste for private life and their own inner standards of behavior, are objects of fear and derision and targets of persecution for either side... in the great ideological wars of our time.

The intellectual power, honesty, lucidity, courage, and disinterested love of the truth of the most gifted thinkers of the eighteenth century remain to this day without parallel. Their age is one of the best and most hopeful episodes in the life of mankind.

The trouble with academics and commentators is that they care more about whether ideas are interesting than whether they are true.