To Be Confronted With A Simple And

It Is Ironic That The United States Should Have Been Founded By Intellectuals, For Throughout Most Of Our Political History, The Intellectual Has Been For The Most Part Either An Outsider, A Servant Or A Scapegoat.

It Has Been Our Fate As A Nation Not To Have Ideologies But To Be One.

The Nation Seems To Slouch Onward Into Its Uncertain Future Like Some Huge Inarticulate Beast, Too Much Attainted By Wounds And Ailments To Be Robust, But Too Strong And Resourceful To Succumb.

We Have Learned So Well How To Absorb Novelty That Receptivity Itself Has Turned Into A Kind Of Tradition- "the Tradition Of The New." Yesterdays Avant-garde Experiment Is Today's Chic And Tomorrows Cliche.

The Delicate Thing About The University Is That It Has A Mixed Character, That It Is Suspended Between Its Position In The Eternal World, With All Its Corruption And Evils And Cruelties, And The Splendid World Of Our Imagination.