Alasdair MacIntyre

“All power tends to coopt, and absolute power coopts absolutely.”

“Imprisoning philosophy within the professionalizations and specializations of an institutionalized curriculum, after the manner of our contemporary European and North American culture, is arguably a good deal more effective in neutralizing its effects than either religious censorship or political terror”

“History is neither a prison nor a museum, nor is it a set of materials for self-congratulation.”

“The attempted professionalization of serious and systematic thinking has had a disastrous effect upon our culture”

“I can be said truly to know who and what I am only because there are others who can be said truly to know who and what I am.”

“It is through hearing stories about wicked stepmothers, lost children, good but misguided kings, wolves that suckle twin boys, youngest sons who receive no inheritance but must make their own way in the world, and eldest sons who waste their inheritance on riotous living and go into exile to live with the swine, that children learn or mislearn both what a child and what a parent is, what the cast of characters may be in the drama into which they have been born and what the ways of the world are.”

“At the foundation of moral thinking lie beliefs in statements the truth of which no further reason can be given.”