Education is not to reform students or amuse them or to make them expert technicians. It is to unsettle their minds, widen their horizons, inflame their intellects, teach them to think straight, if possible.
Education is a kind of continuing dialogue, and a dialogue assumes different points of view.
When we listen to the radio, look at television and read the newspapers we wonder whether universal education has been the great boon that its supporters have always claimed it would be.
Football, fraternities, and fun have no place in the university. They were introduced only to entertain those who shouldn’t be in the university.
For those who are going to learn from books, learning the art of reading would seem to be indispensable.
A world community can exist only with world communication, which means something more than extensive short-wave facilities scattered; about the globe. It means common understanding, a common tradition, common ideas, and common ideals.
Education can be dangerous. It is very difficult to make it not dangerous. In fact, it is almost impossible.
Too few have the courage of my convictions.
A student can win twelve letters at a university without learning how to write one.
Whenever the urge to exercise comes upon me, I lie down for a while and it passes.
The policy of the repression of ideas cannot work and never has worked. The alternative to it is the long difficult road of education. To this the American people have committed.
We can put television in its proper light by supposing that Gutenberg’s great invention had been directed at printing only comic books.
Whether four years of strenuous attention to football and fraternities is the best preparation for professional work has never been seriously investigated.
It sometimes seems as though we were trying to combine the ideal of no schools at all with the democratic ideal of schools for everybody by having schools without education.
Nature will not forgive those who fail to fulfill the law of their being. The law of human beings is wisdom and goodness, not unlimited acquisition.
There is only one justification for universities, as distinguished from trade schools. They must be centers of criticism.
This is a do-it-yourself test for paranoia: you know you’ve got it when you can’t think of anything that’s your fault.
When I feel like exercising I just lie down until the feeling goes away.
It is not so important to be serious as it is to be serious about the important things. The monkey wears an expression of seriousness which would do credit to any college student, but the monkey is serious because he itches.
Nobody can decide for himself whether he is going to be a human being. The only question open to him is whether he will be an ignorant undeveloped one or one who has sought to reach the highest point he is capable of attaining.