The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.
The three major administrative problems on a campus are sex for the students, athletics for the alumni, and parking for the faculty.
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.
The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives.
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.
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 is a kind of continuing dialogue, and a dialogue assumes different points of view.
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.
There is only one justification for universities, as distinguished from trade schools. They must be centers of criticism.
To solve a problem it is necessary to think. It is necessary to think even to decide what facts to collect.
The college graduate is presented with a sheepskin to cover his intellectual nakedness.
We can put television in its proper light by supposing that Gutenberg's great invention had been directed at printing only comic books.
My idea of education is to unsettle the minds of the young and inflame their intellects.
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.
The best education for the best is the best education for all.
A student can win twelve letters at a university without learning how to write one.
...The task is overwhelming, and the chance is slight. We must take the chance or die.
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.
A civilization in which there is not a continuous controversy about important issues is on the way to totalitarianism and death
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.
Most people spend their time on the 'urgent' rather than on the 'important.'
Football, fraternities, and fun have no place in the university. They were introduced only to entertain those who shouldn’t be in the university.
Democracy has not failed; the intelligence of the race has failed before the problems the race has raised
Nobody can read Freud without realizing that he was the scientific equivalent of another nuisance, George Bernard Shaw.
For those who are going to learn from books, learning the art of reading would seem to be indispensable.
Mathematics ... is indispensable as an intellectual technique. In many subjects, to think at all is to think like a mathematician.
To put an end to the spirit of inquiry that has characterized the West it is not necessary to burn the books. All we have to do is to leave them unread for a few generations.
We call Japanese soldiers fanatics when they die rather than surrender, whereas American soldiers who do the same thing are called heroes.
