The most important function of the university in an age of reason is to protect reason from itself.

Education is the movement from darkness to light.

Reason cannot establish values, and its belief that it can is the stupidest and most pernicious illusion.

The liberally educated person is one who is able to resist the easy and preferred answers, not because he is obstinate but because he knows others worthy of consideration.

The artist is the most interesting of all phenomena, for he represents creativity, the definition of man.

The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency - the belief that the here and now is all there is.

Law may prescribe that the male nipples be made equal to the female ones, but they still will not give milk.

To recognize that some of the things our culture believes are not true imposes on us the duty of finding out which are true and which are not.

Once the law is broken with impunity, each man regains the right to any means he deems proper or necessary in order to defend himself against the new tyrant, the one who can break the law.

There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.

As soon as tradition has come to be recognized as tradition, it is dead.

It was so much easier when I didn't want anything. Not getting what you want can make you cruel.

I do wear suits all the time.

I'm making music for music's sake, and I have an audience I'm proud of.

When you go to a power place, if you are receptive, if you are able to quiet your thoughts and concentrate, a lot of that power can enter into you.

There are rules about perception, but not about photography.

I'm probably my biggest critic. There's nothing anyone can ask of me that I haven't already asked of myself.

We have a chance for racial solidarity because all of us, unless you're in the top 1 percent, are really struggling in this economy.

Remember that to change your mind and follow him who sets you right is to be none the less free than you were before.

The only certainty about following the crowd is that you will all get there together.

Writing is a divine art, and the more I write and read the more I love it.