6 Quotes by Robert Maynard Hutchins

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.

Until lately the West has regarded it as self-evident that the road to education lay through great books. No man was educated unless he was acquainted with the masterpieces of his tradition. There never was very much doubt in anybody’s mind about which the masterpieces were. They were the books that had endured and that the common voice of mankind called the finest creations, in writing, of the Western mind.

Mathematics ... is indispensable as an intellectual technique. In many subjects, to think at all is to think like a mathematician.

Mathematics... is indispensable as an intellectual technique. In many subjects, to think at all is to think like a mathematician.

A liberal education... frees a man from the prison-house of his class, race, time, place, background, family and even his nation.

The art of teaching consists in large part of interesting people in things that ought to interest them, but do not.