With the abolition of otium and of the ego no aloof thinking is left. ... Without otium philosophical thought is impossible, cannot be conceived or understood.

Reason has never really directed social reality, but now reason has been so thoroughly purged of any specific trend or preference that it has finally renounced even the task of passing judgment on man's actions and way of life. Reason has turned them over for ultimate sanction to the conflicting interests to which our world actually seems abandoned.

The complexity of the connection between the world of perception and the world of physics does not preclude that such a connection can be shown to exist at any time.

The pathfinders of modern thought did not derive what is good from the law. ... Their role in history was not that of adapting their words and actions to the text of old documents or generally accepted doctrines: they themselves created the documents and brought about the acceptance of their doctrines.

Whoever is not prepared to talk about capitalism should also remain silent about fascism.

The quality of the human that precludes identifying the individual with the class is 'metaphysical' and has no place in empiricist epistemology. The pigeon hole into which a man is shoved circumscribes his fate.

The significance of God, cause, number, substance or soul consists, as James asserts, in nothing but the tendency of the given concept to make us act or think. If the world should reach a point at which it ceases to care not only about such metaphysical entities but also about murders perpetrated behind closed frontiers or simply in the dark, one would have to conclude that the concepts of such murders have no meaning, that they represent no 'distinct ideas' or truths, since they do not make any 'sensible difference to anybody.