-
It is difficult to think of an origin without wanting to go back beyond it.
-
I enjoy popularisation and I think I'm reasonably good at it. I also think it's a duty. It's just so pedagogically stupid to forget how difficult one found these ideas oneself to begin with.
-
It is easy to see why a diversity of cultures should confront power with a problem. If culture is about plurality, power is about unity. How can it sell itself simultaneously to a whole range of life forms without being fatally diluted?
-
I value my Catholic background very much. It taught me not to be afraid of rigorous thought, for one thing.
-
We live in a society which on the one hand pressurizes us into the pursuit of instant gratification, and the other hand imposes on whole sectors of the population and endless deferment of fulfillment.
-
If it is true that we need a degree of certainty to get by, it is also true that too much of the stuff can be lethal.
-
History works itself out by an inevitable internal logic.
-
In the end, the humanities can only be defended by stressing how indispensable they are; and this means insisting on their vital role in the whole business of academic learning, rather than protesting that, like some poor relation, they don't cost much to be housed.