Some full professors could more accurately be described as empty professors.
The left takes its vision seriously – more seriously than it takes the rights of other people. They want to be our shepherds. But that requires us to be sheep.
Organizational progress parallels that in science and technology, permitting ultimate simplicity through intermediate complexity.
The demands of unbounded individualism need to be weighed in the light of inherent social constraints which can only change their form but cannot be eliminated without eliminating civilization.
While rationalism at the individual level is a plea for more personal autonomy from cultural norms, at the social level it is often a claim- or arrogation- of power to stifle the autonomy of others.
Force is the antithesis of freedom, but force must be used, if only to defend against other force.
The reason so many problems do not get solved in Washington is that solving those problems is not the No. 1 priority: Re-election is.
Let’s face it, most of us are not half as smart as we may sometimes think we are – and for intellectuals, not one-tenth as smart.
Over the generations, black leaders have ranged from noble souls to shameless charlatans.
Knowledge can be enormously costly, and is often scattered in widely uneven fragments, too small to be individually usable in decision making. The communication and coordination of these scattered fragments of knowledge is one of the basic problems- perhaps the basic problem- of any society.
The stricter standards and independent, often conclusive, evidence in the physical sciences cannot be generalized to intellectual activity as a whole, even though the aura of scientific processes and results is often appropriated by other intellectuals.
France has never gotten over the fact that it was once a great power and is now just a great nuisance.
Although I am ready to defend what I have said, many people expect me to defend what others have attributed to me.
In various countries and times, leaders of groups that lagged behind, economically and educationally, have taught their followers to blame all their problems on other people – and to hate those other people.
Sometimes it seems as if there are more solutions than problems. On closer scrutiny, it turns out that many of today’s problems are a result of yesterday’s solutions.
Just what is it that academics have to fear if they stand up for common decency, instead of letting campus barbarians run amok?
All justice is inherently social. Can someone on a desert island be either just or unjust?
Imagine a political system so radical as to promise to move more of the poorest 20% of the population into the richest 20% than remain in the poorest bracket within the decade? You don’t need to imagine it. It’s called the United States of America.
Like a baseball game, wars are not over till they are over. Wars don’t run on a clock like football. No previous generation was so hopelessly unrealistic that this had to be explained to them.
Experience trumps brilliance.