WIST Quotations

Fry, Stephen -- The Fry Chronicles: An Autobiography, Part 1 “College to Colleague” (2010)

Dave — Wed, 02 Aug 2023 23:34:40 +0000

A real education takes place, not in the lecture hall or library, but in the rooms of friends, with earnest frolic and happy disputation. Wine can be a wiser teacher than ink, and banter is often better than books. That was my theory at least, and I was living by it.

Stephen Fry (b. 1957) British actor, writer, comedian
The Fry Chronicles: An Autobiography, Part 1 “College to Colleague” (2010)
(Source)

Griswold, Whitney -- “Freedom, Security, and the University Tradition,” speech, Columbia University Bicentennial (1954-06-02)

Dave — Tue, 16 May 2023 06:18:23 +0000

Liberal learning is both a safeguard against false ideas of freedom and a source of true ones.

Whitney Griswold (1906–1963) American historian, educator [Alfred Whitney Griswold]
“Freedom, Security, and the University Tradition,” speech, Columbia University Bicentennial (1954-06-02)
(Source)

Reprinted in Griswold, In the University Tradition (1957).

Quoted by John F. Kennedy in a speech at Yale University (1962-06-11). Citations of Kennedy for the quote are far more common than for Griswold's original.

Connolly, Cyril -- Enemies of Promise, Part 3, ch. 24 “Vale” (1938)

Dave — Tue, 26 Apr 2022 22:42:17 +0000

You imply our education is of no use to you in after life. But no education is. We are not an employment agency; all we can do is to give you a grounding in the art of mixing with your fellow men, to tell you what to expect from life and give you an outward manner and inward poise, an old prescription from the eighteenth century which we call a classical education, an education which confers the infrequent virtues of good sense and good taste and the benefit of dual nationality, English and Mediterranean, and which, taking into account the difficulties of modern life, we find the philosophy best able to overcome them.

Cyril Connolly (1903-1974) English intellectual, literary critic and writer.
Enemies of Promise, Part 3, ch. 24 “Vale” (1938)
(Source)

Speaking as a personified Eton College.

Thoreau, Henry David -- Speech (1860-07-04), “The Last days of John Brown,” North Elba, Massachusetts

Dave — Tue, 15 Jul 2014 12:55:26 +0000

We seem to have forgotten that the expression “a liberal education” originally meant among the Romans one worthy of free men; while the learning of trades and professions by which to get your livelihood merely, was considered worthy of slaves only.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American philosopher and writer
Speech (1860-07-04), “The Last days of John Brown,” North Elba, Massachusetts
(Source)

Collected in A Yankee in Canada (1866).