Except among those whose education has been in the minimalist style, it is understood that hasty moral judgments about the past are a form of injustice.

The sole justification of teaching, of the school itself, is that the student comes out of it able to do something he could not do before. I say do and not know, because knowledge that doesn't lead to doing something new or doing something better is not knowledge at all.

Political correctness does not legislate tolerance; it only organizes hatred.

Let us face a pluralistic world in which there are no universal churches, no single remedy for all diseases, no one way to teach or write or sing, no magic diet, no world poets, and no chosen races, but only the wretched and wonderfully diversified human race.

Science is, in the best and strictest sense, glorious entertainment

To denounce does not free the self from what it hates, any more than ignoring the past shuts off its influence.

[T]hat is the triumph of history - truth absolute is not at hand; the original with which to match the copy does not exist.