"Just as he who has traveled in many lands returns and views his home with new eyes never really having seen it before, so he who follows knowledge in time sees the things about him in a new light. They have a richer meaning and better perspective for they have a wider reference." --Everett Dean Martin, The Meaning of a Liberal Education.

Francis Bacon wrote: "If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins them."

"Barbarians, being more servile than Hellenes-- and Asiatics more than Europeans endure willingly a despotic government. Their monarchies have the nature of tyrannies because the [barbarian] people are by nature slaves." Aristotle, Politics

"Are there not times when good citizens should change their country? Philosophy was invented after all by Ionian expatriates, Christianity developed by the Jews who left Jersusalem; the duty of any inhabitant of any country is moreover surely to his own spirit; in a world which seems to be growing darker every year, he must seek the light wherever it happens to be shining. His talent, if he has a talent, must be planted in the soil and under the skies most favorable to it . . . All I can say is that among my own contemporaries, those Americans who have made their home in Europe--Whistler and Henry James, Sargent and Mary Cassatt and Mrs. Wharton--are, in my opinion, more likely to be remembered than those who stayed home." Logan Pearsall Smith, Unforgotten Years

"It seems to me that the secret of George Orwell was that he was an outsider: almost a displaced person. Through-out much of his life he was on the outside looking in, and during the rest he was a prisoner yearning to escape." Gilbert Highet, A Clerk of Oxenford

"If, however, there is a person . . . so preeminent in excellence that he is not even comparable with the rest, then he can no longer be regarded as part of the state. . . Such a one will naturally be as a god among men. Legislation is concerned primarily with those equal in birth or capacity, but a man of outstanding virtue . . . would be treated unjustly if treated equally. For him there is no law: he is a law unto himself, and would say what the lions said to the hares demanding equality in the assembly ['where are your claws and teeth?'] For this reason democratic states have instituted ostracism. Equality is above all things their aim, and therefore they ostracize and banish from the city for a time those who seem to stand out too much or are too rich or too powerful. . . . [A] painter would not let his animal have a foot of disproportionate size, even though it was an exceptionally beautiful foot . . . nor would the choir master allow a man who sings louder and more beautifully than the rest to stay in the choir. So there is some political justification for ostracizing those too superior." Aristotle, Politics

"There was once a man who accused Demetrius, the Platonic philosopher, of drinking nothing but water and of being the only person who did not wear women's clothes during the feast of Dionysus. If Demetrius on being sent for early the next morning, had not drunk wine in view of everyone and had not put on a lacy gown and played the cymbals and danced, he would have been put to death for not liking the king's mode of life, and being a critic and opponent of Ptolemy's luxury." Lucian, Slander.

"We who wear [bow ties] are a kind of fraternity, like Freemasons, we understand one another . . . it has to do with the feeling that you want to strike a pose, of sorts, to confront the conventional with a kind of smile, a touch of the quixotic. There's a certain joi de vivre about a bow tie." --Gilbert Sandler, quoted in the Baltimore Sun.

"One or two of von Gloeden's [photographic model] Sicilian boys have stocky bodies that would not have fit the Greek ideal. Some were even North Africans, with dark skins. The ancient Greeks, to whom the word 'barbaric' meant 'not Greek' (it later meant 'not Roman' and later still 'not Christian'), presumably would not have found them so attractive." Vicki Goldberg, in New York Times Sunday August 13, 2000.

[An early Masonic philosopher, Karl Christian Friedrich Krause, was all but excommunicated:] "Honest ignorance, zealous bigotry, and well-meaning intolerance are to be found even among sincere and fraternal seekers for the light." --Roscoe Pound, Masonic Addresses and Writings of Roscoe Pound.

"Killing people by scraping the flesh from their bones was an idea that lived. In the fifth century, Christians killed the wellborn Lady Hypatia, according to Gibbon, in a church: they stripped her flesh with oyster shells, and threw the shellfulls of flesh, 'quivering,' in a fire. Her problem was Neoplatonism, says writer Hal Crowther; also she studied mathematics. 'After this,' comments Bertrand Russell, 'Alexandria was no longer troubled by philosophers.'" Annie Dillard

"I can sum up everything I've learned in a few words, and I will: Civilization is an enormous improvement on the lack thereof. . . [W]e are fools when we fail to defend civilization. The ancient Romans might as well have said: "Oh the Germanic tribes have valid nationalistic and cultural aspirations. . . '" P.J. O'Rourke, Holidays In Hell