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.

I think our sensibility is not modernist anymore, that is, sensibility of people who are interested in art and literature.

I don't think that taste should be the decider of moral issues.

Harvard has something that manages, I think, to provide a lot of options for students, but still fairly prescriptive about the kinds of subjects that the courses ought to cover.

I think in general there's no point in going into a field like English literature if you're not going to have fun with it.

There are limits, after all, to the idea of limits.

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.