Leon Wieseltier Quotes

• Here is a humanist proposition for the age of Google: The processing of information is not the highest aim to which the human spirit can aspire, and neither is competitiveness in a global economy. The character of our society cannot be determined by engineers.

  Leon Wieseltier

  Character, Google, Age

  46 Copy quote

• No great deed, private or public, has ever been undertaken in a bliss of certainty.

  Leon Wieseltier

  Deeds, Bliss, Certain

  16 Copy quote

• A thoughtless citizen of a democracy is a delinquent citizen of a democracy.

  Leon Wieseltier

  Democracy, Citizens, Delinquents

  7 Copy quote

• The Internet is like closing time at a blue-collar bar in Boston. Everyone’s drunk and ugly and they’re going to pass out in a few minutes.

  Leon Wieseltier

  Blue, Boston, Drunk

  "Stung by the Perfect Sting" by Maureen Dowd, www.nytimes.com. August 25, 2009.

  9 Copy quote

• There are times when the power of language is not the power that is needed.

  Leon Wieseltier

  Language And Power, Language, Power Of Language

  "American Liberals and the Streets of Cairo". newrepublic.com. January 29, 2011.

  9 Copy quote

• The velocity and volume on the Web are so great that nothing is forgotten and nothing is remembered.

  Leon Wieseltier

  Velocity, Forgotten, Volume

  "The editor's multiple mentions" by Patrick Gavin, www.politico.com. October 19, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

• American Jews, like Americans, have a very consumerist attitude toward their identity: they pick and choose the bits of this and that they like.

  Leon Wieseltier

  Attitude, Identity, Jew

  6 Copy quote

• Philip Kitcher has composed the most formidable defense of the secular view of life since Dewey. Unlike almost all of contemporary atheism, Life After Faith is utterly devoid of cartoons and caricatures of religion. It is, instead, a sober and soulful book, an exemplary practice of philosophical reflection. Scrupulous in its argument, elegant in its style, humane in its spirit, it is animated by a stirring aspiration to wisdom. Even as I quarrel with it I admire it.

  Leon Wieseltier

  Book, Philosophical, Reflection

  4 Copy quote

• Incorruptibility by money is the old story... Now it's incorruptibility by media.

  Leon Wieseltier

  Money, Media, Stories

  9 Copy quote

• There are moral religious people and moral secular people, immoral religious people and immoral secular people.

  Leon Wieseltier

  Religious, People, Moral

  7 Copy quote

• I hear it said of somebody that he is leading a double life. I think to myself: Just two?

  Leon Wieseltier

  Thinking, Two, Said

  4 Copy quote

• But even now, with the crates piled high in the hall, what I see most plainly about the books is that they are beautiful. They take up room? Of course they do: they are an environment; atoms, not bits. My books are not dead weight, they are live weight — matter infused by spirit, every one of them, even the silliest. They do not block the horizon; they draw it. They free me from the prison of contemporaneity: one should not live only in one’s own time. A wall of books is a wall of windows.

  Leon Wieseltier

  Beautiful, Wall, Block

  8 Copy quote

• Her book about the money in sex gives you the feeling of the sex in money.

  Leon Wieseltier

  Money, Sex, Book

  8 Copy quote

• Use the new technologies for the old purposes.

  Leon Wieseltier

  Technology, Purpose, Use

  4 Copy quote

• What matters to me is that one identifies one's genuine obsessions, one's genuine commitments, one's genuine appetites, one pursues them seriously and far.

  Leon Wieseltier

  Commitment, What Matters, Obsession

  4 Copy quote

• I do not value religion chiefly for its morality.

  Leon Wieseltier

  Morality, Values

  4 Copy quote

• The world invited me many places.

  Leon Wieseltier

  World, Invited

  4 Copy quote

• Dilettantism is the sort of thing one must avoid.

  Leon Wieseltier

  4 Copy quote

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