There is only one justification for universities, as distinguished from trade schools. They must be centers of criticism.
It has been said that we have not had the three R’s in America, we had the six R’s; remedial readin’, remedial ‘ritin’ and remedial ’rithmetic.
My idea of education is to unsettle the minds of the young and inflame their intellects.
The college graduate is presented with a sheepskin to cover his intellectual nakedness.
Equality and justice, the two great distinguishing characteristics of democracy, follow inevitably from the conception of men, all men, as rational and spiritual beings.
A civilization in which there is not a continuous controversy about important issues is on the way to totalitarianism and death.
The most distressing aspect of the world into which you are going is its indifference to the basic issues, which now, as always, are moral issues.
America’s experiment with government of the people, by the people, and for the people depends not only on constitutional structure and organization but also on the commitment, person to person, that we make to each other.
Every act of every man is a moral act, to be tested by moral, and not by economic criteria.
Freedom of inquiry, freedom of discussion, and freedom of teaching – without these a university cannot exist.
We call Japanese soldiers fanatics when they die rather than surrender, whereas American soldiers who do the same thing are called heroes.
To solve a problem it is necessary to think. It is necessary to think even to decide what facts to collect.
Democracy has not failed; the intelligence of the race has failed before the problems the race has raised.
College football: I do not see the relationship of those highly industrialized affairs on Saturday afternoons to higher learning in America.
On the principle laid down by Gilbert and Sullivan that when everybody is somebody, nobody is anybody; if everybody is abnormal, we don’t need to worry about anybody.
Most people spend their time on the ‘urgent’ rather than on the ‘important.’
It is not so important to be serious as it is to be serious about the important things.
More free time means more time to waste. The worker who used to have only a little time in which to get drunk and beat his wife now has time to get drunk, beat his wife – and watch TV.
Anybody who feels at ease in the world today is a fool.
The policy of repression of ideas cannot work and never has worked.
We do not know what education can do for us, because we have never tried it.