“You don't have to fight whatever momentum is presented to you. But you can create something with that momentum. There's ways of being creative with whatever is presented to you in the world around you — literally. I can guarantee that. See, that's what's pretty about human beings making things up, the men and women who make things up. It can be played with.”

“One of the things that might be useful for you to think about is — because it became a problem right from the very beginning and I thought I'd chat a bit about it — is to figure out the difference between believing in something and being a theme house. And right from the very beginning we had to confront that with the University — it is that Columbae was an experiment — an experiment in studying, living, and practicing on a number of approaches to nonviolence. It was not set up as a belief system that people had to buy into. Just like if you have an Italian House, you're not supposed to believe in Italians.” [Transcript]

“We had freshman and graduate students right from the very beginning. ... If Freshman are not presented an option, and are presented other options, by inference they think that co-ops are X, Y, and Z. That's not wise, you don't think. But I do think the key to this is really breaking the idea that Columbae is a belief system—that you gotta be a certain way to be here—as compared to taking the time to experiment, so you know more about something.”