You have to pay so much to see theater, even in Chicago. In the Greek theater, you didn't have to pay anything. You actually had to go, and you just sat there all day.

I do think there's a lot of bad writing, and I worry about that in philosophy. I worry about it even more in literary studies, but I wouldn't blame it on any one methodology.

Life is about more than earning a living, and if you're not in the habit of thinking about it, you can end up middle-aged or even older and shocked to realize that your life seems empty.

I think the obstacle for women is that their lives are intertwined with the lives of men. Change at the very deepest level of one's daily life and one's being is required if women are to be really equal.

The humanities teach us the value, even for business, of criticism and dissent. When there's a culture of going along to get along, where whistleblowers are discouraged, bad things happen and businesses implode.

The EU might have become a large federal nation. But they would have had to do things differently. Number one, they would've had to make people feel like participants in a common project of autonomous law-giving. Much more political accountability, much more participation. That didn't happen, I think, because the movers and shakers were more concerned with economic union than political union.

Knowledge is no guarantee of good behavior, but ignorance is a virtual guarantee of bad behavior.