"To avoid starting out on the wrong foot we must keep in mind, then, that the democratic ideal does not define the democratic reality and, vice versa, a real democracy is not, and cannot be, the same as an ideal one; and that democracy results from, and is shaped by, the interactions between its ideals and its reality, the pull of an ought and the resistance of an is."

"If we believe that the task of physics is the discovery of a timeless mathematical equation that captures every aspect of the universe, then we believe that the truth about the universe lies outside t…"

"I shall not attempt to speculate as to what Spinoza might have been if he had lived in our time. For me, in any case, one thing is not open to doubt: Spinoza would never have been an agent of the Leag…"

"The desire to tell the truth is only one condition for being an intellectual. The other is courage, readiness to carry on rational inquiry to wherever it may lead … to withstand … comfortable and lucr…"

"Humility provides everyone, even him who despairs in solitude, with the strongest relationship to his fellow man, and this immediately, though, of course, only in the case of complete and permanent hu…"