The validity of usefulness, adequacy of popular standards can be tested only by research that violates them.

First-world science is one science among many; by claiming to be more it ceases to be an instrument of research and turns into a (political) pressure group.

Arguments hardly affect the faithful- their beliefs have an entirely different foundation.

Yes, the academic world is screwed up, and there is nothing you can do about it. But don't worry about that. Just do what you want. If you know what you want to do and advocate for it, no one will put any energy into stopping you.

Every profession has an ideology and a drive for power that goes far beyond its achievements and it is the task of democracy to keep this ideology and this drive under control. Science is here no different from other institutions.

A free society is a society in which all traditions have equal rights and equal access to the centers of power. A tradition receives these rights not because the importance the cash value, as it were) it has for outsiders but because it gives meaning to the lives of those who participate in it.

Rational discourse is only one way of presenting and examining an issue and by no means the best. Our new intellectuals are not aware of its limitations and of the nature of the things outside.