The past can be used to renew the present, not just to bury it.

A truly common culture is not one in which we all think alike, or in which we all believe that fairness is next to godliness, but one in which everyone is allowed to be in on the project of cooperatively shaping a common way of life.

Rousseau ranks among the great educational theorists of the modern era, even if he was the last man to put in charge of a classroom. Young adults, he thought, should be allowed to develop their capabilities in their distinctive way.

Historical determinism is a recipe for political quietism.

There is no way in which we can retrospectively erase the Treaty of Vienna or the Great Irish Famine. It is a peculiar feature of human actions that, once performed, they can never be recuperated. What is true of the past will always be true of it.

Works of art cannot save us. They can simply render us more sensitive to what needs to be repaired.

Being brought up in a culture is a matter of learning appropriate forms of feeling as much as particular ways of thinking.