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.

Music is intended and designed for sentient beings that have hopes and purposes and emotions.

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

no subject of study is more important than reading…all other intellectual powers depend on it.

It is only in the shadows, when some fresh wave, truly original, truly creative, breaks upon the shore, that there will be a rediscovery of the West.

I have always been - I think any student of history almost inevitably is - a cheerful pessimist.

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.