Public circulation is what renders something a quotation. It's quotable because it's been quoted, and its having been quoted gives it authority.

I'm not one of the people who has a kind of scholarly hat and writes in a certain way for an academic audience and then puts on a public intellectual hat and writes a different way for a different kind of readership. I generally write the way I write, no matter what and it seems to have worked for me.

One of the good things about the profession of being a professor, is that you also have time to do what interests you and what you care about or what you're good at.

You have to have students wanting to take the courses, otherwise you're not going, they're not going to be very effective.

Literature is being taught as though it were only political medicine or political poison-a view that is not only illiberal but illiterate.

It’s all in the genes”: an explanation for the way things are that does not threaten the way things are. Why should someone feel unhappy or engage in antisocial behavior when that person is living in the freest and most prosperous nation on earth? It can’t be the system! There must be a flaw in the wiring somewhere.

I don't think that you want to see universities in any way trying to have any kind of quota system about political views, or views in general. You want the market to work in the way the market works.