Democracy, to maintain itself, must repeatedly conquer every cell and corner of the nation. How many of our public institutions and private businesses, our schools, hospitals, and domestic hearths are in reality little fascist states where freedom of speech is more rigorously excluded than vermin?

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.

The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a student how to learn it.

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

Music, not being made up of objects nor referring to objects, is intangible and ineffable; it can only be as it were inhaled by the spirit: the rest is silence.

Writing, at least a craft and at its best an art, aspiring to the unique, is the most difficult to learn.

It is always some illusion that creates disillusion, especially in the young, for whom the only alternative to perfection is cynicism.