It is as absurd to expect members of philosophy departments to be philosophers as it is to expect members of art departments to be artists.

The facile delusions which conceal from us our true situation all amount to this: that we are, or can be, wiser than the wisest men of the past. We are thus induced to play the part, not of attentive and docile listeners, but of impresarios and lion-tamers.

One cannot refute what one has not thoroughly understood.

Even by proving that a certain view is indispensable for living well, one proves merely that the view in question is a salutary myth: one does not prove it to be true.

If the highest things are unknowable, then the highest capacity or virtue of man cannot be theoretical wisdom.

The contemporary rejection of natural right leads to nihilism - nay, it is identical with nihilism.

The most superficial fact regarding the 'Discourses,' the fact that the number of its chapters equals the number of books of Livy's 'History,' compelled us to start a chain of tentative reasoning which brings us suddenly face to face with the only New Testament quotation that ever appears in Machiavelli's two books and with an enormous blasphemy.