The idea - the core idea of humanism - is that the act of reading about great deeds will lead you to imitate them.

Language is not a handmaiden to perception; it is perception; it gives shape to what would otherwise be inert and dead.

I should have known better. Pro-life arguments are now based on scientific evidence and the pro-choice arguments are not. That is a cultural, historical fact.

This is what language does: organize the world into manageable, and in some sense artificial, units that can then be inhabited and manipulated.

It is always incorrect to assume you can know what someone's moral convictions are based on their philosophical theories.

Any idea can be brought into the classroom if the point is to inquire into its structure, history, influence and so forth. But no idea belongs in the classroom if the point of introducing it is to recruit your students for the political agenda it may be thought to imply.

We in universities are not in the democracy business. What we do, when we're doing it, is teach and learn.