There Is No Real Education That Does

A Good Education Would Be Devoted To Encouraging And Refining The Love Of The Beautiful, But A Pathologically Misguided Moralism Instead Turns Such Longing Into A Sin Against The High Goal Of Making Everyone Feel Good, Of Overcoming Nature In The Name Of Equality. ... Love Of The Beautiful May Be The Last And Finest Sacrifice To Radical Egalitarianism.

Sycophancy Toward Those Who Hold Power Is A Fact In Every Regime, And Especially In A Democracy, Where, Unlike Tyranny, There Is An Accepted Principle Of Legitimacy That Breaks The Inner Will To Resist.... Flattery Of The People And Incapacity To Resist Public Opinion Are The Democratic Vices, Particularly Among Writers, Artists, Journalists And Anyone Else Who Is Dependent On An Audience.

Various Kinds Of Self-forgetting, Usually Accompanied By Illusions And Myths, Make It Possible To Live Without The Intransigent Facing Of Death-in The Sense Of Always Thinking About It And What It Means For Life And The Things Dear In Life-which Is Characteristic Of A Serious Life.

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.

The Facile Economic And Psychological Debunking Of The Theoretical Life Cannot Do Away With Its Irreducible Beauties.