[Walt] Whitman and [humanist educator John] Dewey tried to substitute hope for knowledge. They wanted to put shared utopian dreams - dreams of an ideally decent and civilized society - in the place of knowledge of God's Will, Moral Law, the Laws of History, or the Facts of Science.... As long as we have a functioning political left, we still have a chance to achieve our country, to make it the country of Whitman's and Dewey's dreams.

"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.

Philosophy makes progress not by becoming more rigorous but by becoming more imaginative.

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.

The difference between people and ideas is... only superficial.

The most important advance that the West has yet made is to develop a secularist moral tradition

If I had to lay bets, my bet would be that everything is going to go to hell, but, you know, what else have we got except hope?