I never yet touched a fig leaf that didnt turn into a price tag. — Saul Bellow

"When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice."

"There are evils, as someone has pointed out, that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever — money, for instance, or war."

"Californias like an artificial limb the rest of the country doesnt really need. You can quote me."

"We take foreigners to be incomplete Americans — convinced that we must help and hasten their evolution."

"As a scholar [Allan Bloom] intends to enlighten us, and as a writer he has learned from Aristophanes and other models that enlightenment should also be enjoyable. To me, this is not the book of a professor, but that of a thinker who is willing to take the risks more frequently taken by writers. It is risky in a book of ideas to speak in one’s own voice, but it reminds us that the sources of the truest truths are inevitably profoundly personal. … Academics, even those describing themselves as existentialists, very seldom offer themselves publicly and frankly as individuals, as persons."

"The late philosopher Morris R. Cohen of CCNY was asked by a student in the metaphysics course, “Professor Cohen, how do I know that I exist?” The keen old prof replied, “And who is asking?”"