Everything we know has its origins in questions. Questions, we might say, are the principal intellectual instruments available to human beings.

Public schooling does not serve a public; it creates a pubic.

When media make war against each other, it is a case of world-views in collision.

...there must be a sequence to learning, that perseverance and a certain measure of perspiration are indispensable, that individual pleasures must frequently be submerged in the interests of group cohesion, and that learning to be critical and to think conceptually and rigorously do not come easily to the young but are hard-fought victories.

Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice. The result is that we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death.

The past is strapped to our backs. We do not have to see it; we can always feel it. People gather bundles of sticks to build bridges they never cross. People in distress will sometimes prefer a problem that is familiar to a solution that is not.

Voting is the next-to-last refuge of the politically impotent. The last refuge, of course, is giving your opinion to a pollster.