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All Quotes Collection
"It was to do with information management. The intention was to dramatise it."
66
"You never get quite down to the bottom of the barrel, but we are much higher than that at the present time. There is quite a lot left in the barrel that could be explained by them. If they have some weapons, if they have some anthrax, they should deliver that."
35
"The inspections started in 1991, right after the Gulf War. One of the conditions for the ceasefire was that Iraq had to do away with all of its weapons of mass destruction - biological, chemical and nuclear weapons and long-range missiles."
55
"So interviews are a valuable tool, but under certain circumstances they'd be more valuable than others."
35
"Like I said, I'm more worried long term about the environmental issues then the use of arms."
32
"I also hear your president say that war is the means of last resort and I think he means that. I met him last autumn and he assured me that they wanted to come through and disarm Iraq by peaceful means, and that's what we are trying to do as hard as we can."
158
"International cooperation, multilateralism is indispensable."
39
"Iraq did not spontaneously opt for disarmament. They did it as part of a ceasefire, so they were forced to do it, otherwise the war might have gone on. So the motivation has been very different."
35
"I can imagine that the Iraqis undertake the destruction out of fear. If they had denied it, if they had said no, that certainly would have played into the hands of those that would like to take armed action immediately. I have no illusions in that regard."
35
"The ABC of our profession is to avoid these large abstract terms in order to try to discover behind them the only concrete realities, which are human beings."
38
"The good historian is like the giant of the fairy tale. He knows that wherever he catches the scent of human flesh, there his quarry lies."
46
"But history is neither watchmaking nor cabinet construction. It is an endeavor toward better understanding."
51
"The historian is, by definition, absolutely incapable of observing the facts which he examines."
133
"I have the heart of a child. I keep it in a jar on my shelf."
24
"Students now arrive at the university ignorant and cynical about our political heritage, lacking the wherewithal to be either inspired by it or seriously critical of it."
41
"We are like ignorant shepherds living on a site where great civilizations once flourished. The shepherds play with the fragments that pop up to the surface, having no notion of the beautiful structures of which they were once a part."
31
"There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative."
42
"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."
39
"The spirit is at home, if not entirely satisfied, in America."
34
"The real community of man is the community of those who seek the truth, of the potential knowers."
39
"The most important function of the university in an age of reason is to protect reason from itself."
36
"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."
42
"Rock gives children, on a silver platter, with all the public authority of the entertainment industry, everything their parents always used to tell them they had to wait for until they grew up and would understand later."
45
"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."
37
"As soon as tradition has come to be recognized as tradition, it is dead."
38
"The liberally educated person is one who is able to resist the easy and preferred answers, not because he is obstinate but because he knows others worthy of consideration."
41
"Authentic values are those by which a life can be lived, which can form a people that produces great deeds and thoughts."
38
"Reason transformed into prejudice is the worst form of prejudice, because reason is the only instrument for liberation from prejudice."
36
"Education is the movement from darkness to light."
88
"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."
42
"Nothing is more singular about this generation than its addiction to music."
38
"Only Socrates knew, after a lifetime of unceasing labor, that he was ignorant. Now every high-school student knows that. How did it become so easy?"
38
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