“If there is anything more dangerous to the life of the mind than having no independent commitment to ideas, it is having an excess of commitment to some special and constricting idea. The effect is as observable in politics as in theology: the intellectual function can be overwhelmed by an excess of piety expended within too contracted a frame of reference.”

Propos sur le Religion no. 74 (1938), under the pen name Alain. <br class="br">Alternate translation: “Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when it&#x27;s the only one we have.” IZQuotes https://izquotes.com/quote/%C3%A9mile-chartier/nothing-is-more-dangerous-than-an-idea-when-you-have-only-one-idea-390165 (retrieved 10/30/18).

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 51
Context: Campus speech codes, that folly of the navel-gazing left, have increased the appeal of the right. Ideas must confront ideas. When hurt feelings and bruised egos are more important than the unfettered life of the mind, the universities have committed suicide.

Source: The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), Chapter II, Section I, p. 15

Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 48

Speech at a farewell function for outgoing United States Ambassador David Lyon, 15 July 2005 (excerpts)

Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 12, p. 203

As quoted in &quot;Stray Questions for: David Eagleman&quot; by Blake Wilson in The New York Times (10 July 2009) http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/10/stray-questions-for-david-eagleman/ <br class="br">Context: Our ignorance of the cosmos is too vast to commit to atheism, and yet we know too much to commit to a particular religion. A third position, agnosticism, is often an uninteresting stance in which a person simply questions whether his traditional religious story (say, a man with a beard on a cloud) is true or not true. But with Possibilianism I’m hoping to define a new position — one that emphasizes the exploration of new, unconsidered possibilities. Possibilianism is comfortable holding multiple ideas in mind; it is not interested in committing to any particular story.

Source: The Angel's Game

1970s
Source: Remarks to the Liaison Committee with the Trades Union Congress at Congress House (20 January 1975), quoted in Barbara Castle, The Castle Diaries, 1974–76 (1980), pp. 284-285