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

My own view is that the general education curriculum that a college picks has to be appropriate for the kind of student body that it has.

Cognitive science is a rapidly developing area, so it could be that there are some surprises around the corner. That does seem to be kind of where the trend line is leading.

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

I don't really usually push an agenda, and I don't feel that my main job is to persuade people of something. My main job is to help them think about something.

Getting faculties to come to a consensus about something that they've never really thought about or had to worry about in their careers before can be a rather slow process and a long process, it certainly was the case at Harvard, and it's the case with most of the general education curricula that I know of, it takes four or five years just to get everybody on board with one idea.

You want diversity in any intellectual organization. I mean, that's how good ideas arise.