Robert Hutchins Quotes
- Great books are great teachers; they are showing us every day what ordinary people are capable of. These books come out of ignorant, inquiring humanity. They are usually the first announcements for success in learning. Most of them were written for, and addressed to, ordinary people. - View Quote Details on Great books are great teachers; they are showing us every…
- There appears to be an innate human tendency to underestimate the capacity of those who do not belong to “our” group. Those who do not share our background cannot have our ability. Foreigners, people who are in a different economic status, and the young seem invariably to be regarded as intellectually backward… - View Quote Details on There appears to be an innate human tendency to underestimate…
- Liberal education was aristocratic in the sense that it was the education of those who enjoyed leisure and political power. If it was the right education for those who had leisure and political power, then it is the right education for everybody today. - View Quote Details on Liberal education was aristocratic in the sense that it was…
- The business of saying, in advance of a serious effort, that people are not capable of achieving a good education is too strongly reminiscent of the opposition of every extension of democracy. This opposition has always rested on the allegation that the people were incapable of exercising the power they demanded. Always the historic statement has been verified: you cannot expect the slave to show the virtues of the free man unless you first set him free. When the slave has been set free, he has, in the passage of time, become indistinguishable from those who have always been free. - View Quote Details on The business of saying, in advance of a serious effort,…
- …all should be well acquainted with and each in his measure actively and continuously engaged in the Great Conversation that man has had about what is and should be… - View Quote Details on …all should be well acquainted with and each in his…
- Because of experimental science we know a very large number of things about the natural world of which our predecessors were ignorant. In the great books we can observe the birth of science, applaud the development of the experimental technique, and celebrate the triumphs it has won. But we can also note the limitations of the method and mourn the errors that its misapplication has caused. We can distinguish the outlines of those great persistent problems that the method… may never solve and find the clues to their solutions offered by other methods and other disciplines. - View Quote Details on Because of experimental science we know a very large number…
- Educators ought to know better than their pupils what an education is. If the educators do not, they have wasted their lives. The art of teaching consists in large part of interesting people in things that ought to interest them, but do not. The task of educators is to discover what an education is and then to invent the methods of interesting their students in it. - View Quote Details on Educators ought to know better than their pupils what an…
- The Great Books show… that even those thinkers of the past who are now often looked upon as the most reactionary, the medieval theologians, insisted, as Aristotle had before them, that the truth of any statement is its conformity to reality or fact, and that sense experience is required to discover the particular matters of fact that test the truth of general statements about the nature of things. - View Quote Details on The Great Books show… that even those thinkers of the…
- The great books… afford us the best examples of man’s efforts to seek the truth, both about the nature of things and about human conduct, by methods other than those of experimental science; and because these examples are presented in the context of equally striking examples of man’s efforts to learn by experiment… the great books provide us with the best materials for judging whether the experimental method is or is not the only acceptable method of inquiry into all things. - View Quote Details on The great books… afford us the best examples of man’s…
- 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…
- 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…
- There is a sense in which every great book is always over the head of the reader: he can never fully comprehend it. That is why these books are great teachers; they demand the attention of the reader and keep his intelligence on the stretch. - View Quote Details on There is a sense in which every great book is…
- Is there any such thing as “an education”? The answer that is made by the devotees of the dogma of individual differences is No; there are as many different educations as there are different individuals; it is “authoritarian” to say that there is any education that is necessary, or even suitable, for every individual. - View Quote Details on Is there any such thing as “an education”? The answer…
- 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…
- Because the bulk of mankind has never had the chance to get a liberal education, it cannot be “proved” that they can get it. Neither can it be “proved” that they cannot. The statement of the ideal, however, is of value in indicating the direction that education should take. - View Quote Details on Because the bulk of mankind has never had the chance…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- One voice in the Great Conversation itself announces this modern point of view. In the closing paragraph of his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume writes: “When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume… let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”…the positivists of our own day, would commit to burning or, what is the same, to dismissal from serious consideration… Those books… argue the case against the kind of positivism that asserts that everything except mathematics and experimental science is sophistry and illusion….The Great Conversation… contains both sides of the issue… - View Quote Details on One voice in the Great Conversation itself announces this modern…
- 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…
- 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. - View Quote Details on We do not confine people to looking at poor pictures…
- It is sometimes admitted that many propositions that are affirmed by intelligent people, such as that democracy is the best form of government or that world peace depends upon world government, cannot be tested by the method of experimental science. - View Quote Details on It is sometimes admitted that many propositions that are affirmed…
- 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…
About Robert Hutchins
Robert M. (Maynard) Hutchins (17 January 1899 – 17 May 1977 ) was an educational philosopher, a president (1929–1945) of the University of Chicago and its chancellor (1945–1951).
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