"Education in our times must try to find whatever there is in students that might yearn for completion, and to reconstruct the learning that would enable them autonomously to seek that completion."

"There is no real teacher who in practice does not believe in the existence of the soul, or in a magic that acts on it through speech."

"Fathers and mothers have lost the idea that the highest aspiration they might have for their children is for them to be wise... specialized competence and success are all that they can imagine."

"The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency - the belief that the here and now is all there is."

"Literature is my life of course, but from an ontological point of view. From an existential point of view, I like being a teacher."

"Financial literacy is an issue that should command our attention because many Americans are not adequately organizing finances for their education, healthcare and retirement."

"I was never into the popular school or clique or anything. Then I started doing movies when I was in high school, so then I got popular. Then the girls paid attention to you who didn't before."

"Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously."