We do not confine people to looking at poor pictures…

We do not confine people to looking at poor pictures and listening to poor music. WE urge them to look at as many good pictures and hear as much good music as they can, convinced that this is the way in which they will come to understand and appreciate art and music.

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

Other Robert Hutchins Quotes

The contemporary practices of scientific research, as well as the scientific efforts that the great books record, show beyond doubt that the method of controlled experiment under artificial conditions is not the only method used by men who regard themselves and are regarded as scientists….as the work of astronomers, biologists, and social scientists reveals, experiment in the strict sense is not always possible. - View Quote Details on The contemporary practices of scientific research, as well as the…
The rise of experimental science has not made the Great Conversation irrelevant…. Science itself is part of the Great Conversation. - View Quote Details on The rise of experimental science has not made the Great…
In the knowledge of nature,” Aristotle writes, the test of principles “is the unimpeachable evidence of the senses as to the fact.” He holds that “lack of experience diminishes our power of taking a comprehensive view of the admitted facts. Hence those who dwell in the intimate association with nature and its phenomena grow more and more able to formulate, as the foundation of their theories, principles such as to admit of a wide and coherent development; while those whom devotion to abstract discussions has rendered unobservant of the facts are too ready to dogmatize on the basis of a few observations.” Theories should be accredited, Aristotle insists, “only if what they affirm agrees with the facts. - View Quote Details on In the knowledge of nature,” Aristotle writes, the test of…
The dogma of individual differences. This is one of the basic dogmas of American education. It runs something like this: all men are different; therefore, all men require a different education; therefore, anybody who suggests that education should be in any respect the same has ignored the fact that all men are different; therefore, nobody should suggest that everybody should read some of the same books; some people should read some books, some should read others. This dogma has gained such a hold… that you will often now hear a college president boast that his college has no curriculum. Each student has a course of study framed, or “tailored”… to meet his own individual needs and interests. - View Quote Details on The dogma of individual differences. This is one of the…
We are told… Statements that are not mathematical or logical formulae may look as if they were necessarily or certainly true, but they only look like that. They cannot really be either necessary or certain. - View Quote Details on We are told… Statements that are not mathematical or logical…
Recall the dictum of Rousseau: “It matters little to me whether my pupil is intended for the army, the church, or law. Before his parents chose a calling for him, nature called him to be a man…. When he leaves me, he will be neither a magistrate, a soldier, nor a priest; he will be a man.” - View Quote Details on Recall the dictum of Rousseau: “It matters little to me…
In the course of history… new books have been written that have won their place in the list. Books once thought entitled to belong to it have been superseded; and this process of change will continue as long as men can think and write. It is the task of every generation to reassess the tradition in which it lives, to discard what it cannot use, and to bring into context with the distant and intermediate past the most recent contributions to the Great Conversation…. the West needs to recapture and reemphasize and bring to bear upon its present problems the wisdom that lies in the works of its greatest thinkers and in the discussion that they have carried on. - View Quote Details on In the course of history… new books have been written…
Only an unashamed dogmatist would dare to assert that the issue has finally been resolved now, in favor of the view that, outside logic or mathematics, the method of modern science is the only method to employ in seeking knowledge. The dogmatist who made this assertion would have to be more than ashamed. He would have to blind himself to the fact that his own assertion was not established by the experimental method, nor made as an indisputable conclusion of mathematical reasoning or of purely logical analysis. - View Quote Details on Only an unashamed dogmatist would dare to assert that the…
If only the specialist is to be allowed access to these books, on the ground that it is impossible to understand them without “scholarship,”… then we shall be compelled to shut out the majority of mankind from some of the finest creations of the human mind. This is aristocracy with a vengeance. - View Quote Details on If only the specialist is to be allowed access to…
…criticisms that I have mentioned come to the same thing: that liberal education is too good for the people. - View Quote Details on …criticisms that I have mentioned come to the same thing:…