For a liberal arts education is not a tool like a hoe or a blueprint or an electric mixer. It is a true and precious stone which can glow just as wholesomely on a kitchen table as when it is put on exhibition in a jeweler’s window or bartered for bread and butter. Learning is a boon, a personal good. It is a light in the mind, a pleasure for the spirit, an object to be enjoyed. It is refreshment, warmth, illumination, a window from which we get a view of the world. To what barbarian plane are we descending when we demand that it serve only the economy?
Phyllis McGinley (1905-1978) American author, poet
“A Jewel in the Pocket,” Sixpence in Her Shoe (1964)
(Source)
Quotations about:
humanities
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There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live.
John Adams (1735-1826) American lawyer, Founding Father, statesman, US President (1797-1801)
(Misattributed)
Actually American writer and historian James Truslow Adams (1878-1949). Variants:
- "There are two types of education. One should teach us how to make a living, and the other how to live."
- "There are two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live."
He that studies books alone, will know how things ought to be; and he that studies men will know how things are.
Charles Caleb "C. C." Colton (1780-1832) English cleric, writer, aphorist
Lacon: or, Many Things in Few Words, Preface (1821 ed.)
I am human, I consider nothing human is alien to me.
[Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto.]
Terence (186?-159 BC) African-Roman dramatist [Publius Terentius Afer]
Heauton Timoroumenos [The Self-Tormentor], l. 77
Alt. trans.:
- "I am human [being], I consider nothing human to be alien to me."
- "I am a human being, so there is nothing human I do not feel to be my concern."
- "I am a human being; nothing human is alien to me."
