It is not the truth of Marxism that explains the willingness of intellectuals to believe it, but the power that it confers on intellectuals, in their attempts to control the world. And since, as Swift says, it is futile to reason someone out of a thing that he was not reasoned into, we can conclude that Marxism owes its remarkable power to survive every criticism to the fact that it is not a truth-directed but a power-directed system of thought.

Freedom can reside only in a point of view, a way of looking upon the system of necessity.Surely this is the one freedom that we may attain to: not to be released from physical reality, but to understand reality and ourselves as part of it, and so be reconciled to what we are.

The conservative response to modernity is to embrace it, but to embrace it critically, in full consciousness that human achievements are rare and precarious, that we have no God-given right to destroy our inheritance, but must always patiently submit to the voice of order, and set an example of orderly living.

The best evidence of a mind is when you change it

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.

Marriage does not exist for the benefit of the present generation but for the benefit of the next

In argument about moral problems, relativism is the first refuge of the scoundrel.