It may well be that a society's greatest madness seems normal to itself.

We need history, not to tell us what happened or to explain the past, but to make the past alive so that it can explain us and make a future possible.

This nation's impulse is toward the future, and tradition seems more of a shackle to it than an inspiration.

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

Children tend to be rather better observers of adults' characters than adults are of children's, because children are so dependent on adults that it is very much in their interest to discover the weaknesses of their elders.

Culture as art is the peak expression of man's creativity, his capacity to break out of nature's narrow bounds, and hence out of the degrading interpretation of man in modern natural and political science.

An education, other than purely professional or technical, can even seem to be an impediment.

Education is the movement from darkness to light.

The importance of these [college] years for an American cannot be overestimated. They are civilization's only chance to get to him.

We are like ignorant shepherds living on a site where great civilizations once flourished.