42 Quotes About Humanities

You can’t enjoy art or books in a hurry.

One of the essential qualities of the clinician is interest in humanity, for the secret of the care of the patient … is in caring for the patient.

Art is in the eye of the beholder, and everyone will have their own interpretation.

Let's always try to paint the truth ... our art must be made to mean something.

I believe there no surer path to leaping dramatically forward in your career than to earn a Ph.D. in the humanities. Because the thought leaders in our industry are not the ones who plodded dully, step by step, up the career ladder. The leaders are the ones who took chances and developed unique perspectives.

In my parents' day and age, it used to be the person who fell short. Now it's the discipline. Reading the classics is too difficult, therefore it's the classics that are to blame. Today the student asserts his incapacity as a privilege. I can't learn it, so there is something wrong with it. And there is something especially wrong with the bad teacher who wants to teach it. There are no more criteria, Mr. Zuckerman, only opinions.

There's very little authentic study of the humanities remaining. My research assistant came to me two years ago saying she'd been in a seminar in which the teacher spent two hours saying that Walt Whitman was a racist. This isn't even good nonsense. It's insufferable.

The humanities should constitute the core of any university worth the name.

In trying to justify the humanities, as in trying to live a life, what may turn out to matter most is holding one's nerve.