Madison

“As civilized human beings, we are the inheritors, neither of an inquiry about ourselves and the world, nor of an accumulating body of information, but of a conversation, begun in the primeval forests and extended and made more articulate in the course of centuries. It is a conversation which goes on both in public and within each of ourselves.”
― Michael Oakeshott

“If you beat your head against the wall, it is your head that breaks and not the wall.”
― Antonio Gramsci

“[Snobbishness] is the desire for what divides men and the inability to value what unites them.”
― Joseph Epstein

“Whereas modern cynicism brought despair about the ability of the human species to realize laudable ideals, postmodern cynicism doesn't — not because it's optimistic, but because it can't take ideals seriously in the first place. The prevailing attitude is Absurdism. A postmodern magazine may be irreverent, but not bitterly irreverent, for it's not purposefully irreverent; its aim is indiscriminate, because everyone is equally ridiculous. And anyway, there's no moral basis for passing judgment. Just sit back and enjoy the show.”
― Robert Wright, The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are - The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology