This Nation's Impulse Is Toward The Future,

There Are Two Threats To Reason, The Opinion That One Knows The Truth About The Most Important Things And The Opinion That There Is No Truth About Them. Both Of These Opinions Are Fatal To Philosophy; The First Asserts That The Quest For Truth Is Unnecessary, While The Second Asserts That It Is Impossible. The Socratic Knowledge Of Ignorance, Which I Take To Be The Beginning Point Of All Philosophy, Defines The Sensible Middle Ground Between Two Extremes.

Locke Had Illegitimately Selected Those Parts Of Man He Needed For His Social Contract And Suppressed All The Rest, A Theoretically Unsatisfactory Procedure And A Practically Costly One. The Bourgeois Is The Measure Of The Price Paid, He Who Most Of All Cannot Afford To Look To His Real Self, Who Denies The Existence Of The Thinly Boarded-over Basement In Him, Who Is Most Made Over For The Purposes Of A Society That Does Not Even Promise Him Perfection Or Salvation But Merely Buys Him Off.

A Serious Life Means Being Fully Aware Of The Alternatives, Thinking About Them With All The Intensity One Brings To Bear On Life-and-death Questions, In Full Recognition That Every Choice Is A Great Risk With Necessary Consequences That Are Hard To Bear.

Nothing Is More Singular About This Generation Than Its Addiction To Music.

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.