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.

The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives.

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.

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.

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.

Freedom of inquiry, freedom of discussion, and freedom of teaching - without these a university cannot exist.

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.

The best education for the best is the best education for all.

Anybody who feels at ease in the world today is a fool.

When I feel like exercising I just lie down until the feeling goes away.

My idea of education is to unsettle the minds of the young and inflame their intellects.

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.

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.

...the fullest development of the highest powers of men can be achieved only in a world of peace.

There is only one justification for universities, as distinguished from trade schools. They must be centers of criticism.

We can put television in its proper light by supposing that Gutenberg's great invention had been directed at printing only comic books.

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.

Most people spend their time on the 'urgent' rather than on the 'important.'

A civilization in which there is not a continuous controversy about important issues is on the way to totalitarianism and death

Every act of every man is a moral act, to be tested by moral, and not by economic criteria.

For those who are going to learn from books, learning the art of reading would seem to be indispensable.

To solve a problem it is necessary to think. It is necessary to think even to decide what facts to collect.

College football: I do not see the relationship of those highly industrialized affairs on Saturday afternoons to higher learning in America.

The college graduate is presented with a sheepskin to cover his intellectual nakedness.