Author

When I was a graduate student, the leading spirits at Harvard were interested in the history of ideas.

The theories of the major philosophers of the 18th century secular enlightenment were biblical and theological in spite of themselves.

From M. H. Abrams

It's amazing how, age after age, in country after country, and in all languages, Shakespeare emerges as incomparable.

From M. H. Abrams

John Updike is always fun. And one of my former students, Tom Pynchon. And Harold Bloom, another former student.

From M. H. Abrams

Secular thinkers have no more been able to work free of the centuries-old Judeo-Christian culture than Christian theologians were able to work free of their inheritance of classical and pagan thought. The process... has not been the deletion and replacement of religious ideas but rather the assimilation and reinterpretation of religious ideas.

From M. H. Abrams

We worked on solving the problem of voice communications in a noisy military environment. We established military codes that are highly audible and invented selection tests for personnel who had a superior ability to recognize sound in a noisy background.

From M. H. Abrams

When something startlingly new comes up, young people, especially, seize it. You can't complain about that. I think its heyday has passed, but it's had an effect and will continue to have an effect.

From M. H. Abrams