Robert M. Hutchins Quotes.
It must be remembered that the purpose of education is not to fill the minds of students with facts… it is to teach them to think.
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.
To solve a problem it is necessary to think. It is necessary to think even to decide what facts to collect.
Education is a kind of continuing dialogue, and a dialogue assumes different points of view.
Football, fraternities and fun have no place in the university. They were introduced only to entertain those who shouldn’t be in the university.
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.
A liberal education… frees a man from the prison-house of his class, race, time, place, background, family and even his nation.
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.
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.
A civilization in which there is not a continuous controversy about important issues is on the way to totalitarianism and death
The best education for the best is the best education for all.
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.
The college graduate is presented with a sheepskin to cover his intellectual nakedness.
College football: I do not see the relationship of those highly industrialized affairs on Saturday afternoons to higher learning in America.
Anybody who feels at ease in the world today is a fool.
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.
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.
My idea of education is to unsettle the minds of the young and inflame their intellects.
Every act of every man is a moral act, to be tested by moral, and not by economic criteria.
When I feel like exercising I just lie down until the feeling goes away.
The three major administrative problems on a campus are sex for the students, athletics for the alumni, and parking for the faculty.
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.
Freedom of inquiry, freedom of discussion, and freedom of teaching – without these a university cannot exist.
Most people spend their time on the ‘urgent’ rather than on the ‘important.’
