With intellectuals, moral thought is often less a tonic that quickens ethical action than a narcotic that deadens it.

A perfect conversation would run much less to brilliant sentences than to unfinished ones.

With intellectuals, moral thought is often less a tonic that quickens ethical action than a narcotic that deadens it.

Today's competitiveness, so much imposed from without, is exhausting, not exhilarating; is unending-a part of one's social life, one's solitude, one's sleep, one's sleeplessness.

Coyness is a rather comically pathetic fault, a miscalculation in which, by trying to veil the ego, we let it appear stark naked.

For tens of millions of people [television] has become habit-forming, brain-softening, taste-degrading.

One of the saddest things about conformity is the ghastly sort of non-conformity it breeds; the noisy protesting, the aggressive rebelliousness, the rigid counter-fetishism.