The test and the use of man's education is that he finds pleasure in the exercise of his mind.

Maxims in times of danger are useless, experience is incommunicable. The knotted strands of life, desire, assumptions, and moral codes cannot be unsnarled; they can only be cut, which is what happens when an air raid occurs, with a silencing fortissimo like the finale of a Beethoven symphony.

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?

In a large university, there are as many deans and executive heads as there are schools and departments. Their relations to one another are intricate and periodic; in fact, "galaxy" is too loose a term: it is a planetarium of deans with the President of the University as a central sun. One can see eclipses, inner systems, and oppositions.

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.

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

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