The aristocratic mind ... is anti-analytical. It is concerned more with the status of being than with the demonstrable relationship of parts.

Where character forbids self-indulgence, transcendence still hovers around.

The word is a sort of deliverance from the shifting world of appearances. The central teaching of the New Testament is that those who accept the word acquire wisdom and at the same time some identification with the eternal.

One of the most important revelations about a period comes in its theory of language, for that informs us whether language is viewed as a bridge to the noumenal or as a body of fictions convenient for grappling with transitory phenomena.

When you're on the wrong road, sometimes the most progressive man is the one who goes backwards first. As long as there are such people, hope lies in our future.

Those who are guilty of the argumentum ad ignorantiam profess belief in something because its opposite cannot be proved ... In the realm where "prejudice" is now most an issue, it normally takes a form like this: you cannot prove by the method of statistics and quantitative measurement that men are not equal. Therefore all men are equal. ... You cannot prove again by the methods of science that one culture is higher than another. Therefore the culture of the Digger Indians is just a good as that of Muncie, Indiana, or thirteenth-century France.

That it does not matter what a man believes is a statement heard on every side today. ... What he believes tells him what the world is for. How can men who disagree about what the world is for agree about any of the minutiae of daily conduct? The statement really means that it does not matter what a man believes so long as he does not take his beliefs seriously.