National pride is to countries what self-respect is to individuals: a necessary condition for self-improvement.

My principal motive is the belief that we can still make admirable sense of our lives even if we cease to have... an ambition of transcendence.

You read the pragmatists and all you know is: not Descartes, not Kant, not Plato. It's like aspirin. You can't use aspirin to give yourself power, you take it to get rid of headaches. In that way, pragmatism is a philosophical therapy. It helps you stop asking the unhelpful questions.

If the body had been easier to understand, nobody would have thought that we had a mind.

Freedom is the recognition of contingency.

"True" resembles... a compliment paid to sentences that seem to be paying their way and that fit in with other sentences which are doing so.

Always strive to excel, but only on weekends.