John F. Kennedy Quotes

Freedom to learn is the first necessity of guaranteeing that man himself shall be self-reliant enough to be free.… when the clock of civilization can be turned back by burning libraries, by exiling scientists, artists, musicians, writers and teachers; by disbursing universities, and by censoring news and literature and art; an added burden, an added burden is placed on those countries where the courts of free thought and free learning still burn bright. If the fires of freedom and civil liberties burn low in other lands they must be made brighter in our own.

The essence of Vanderbilt is still learning, the essence of its outlook is still liberty, and liberty and learning will be and must be the touchstones of Vanderbilt University and of any free university in this country or the world. I say two touchstones, yet they are almost inseparable, inseparable if not indistinguishable, for liberty without learning is always in peril, and learning without liberty is always in vain.

The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.

Education keeps the key of life; and liberal education insures the first conditions of freedom,--namely, adequate knowledge and accustomed thought.

The free man cannot be long an ignorant man.

Freedom can occur only through education.

The greatest gift that Oxford gives her sons is, I truly believe, a genial irreverence toward learning, and from that irreverence love may spring.

Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts.

A University should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning.

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out.

It is very nearly impossible... to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.

Only the educated are free.

Universities are the temple through which alone lies the road to that of Liberty.

Freedom can exist only in the society of knowledge.

You can imprison but you can't enslave a man who argues with his books.

We have to move back to the idea that education isn't about teaching people to bow to rigid rules. That's not what democracy is about.

Teachers must be encouraged - I almost said 'freed', to pursue an education that strives for depth of understanding.

Freedom, the first-born of science.

He says, you have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind about history and everything else but you can’t make up an empty mind. Stock your mind, stock your mind. It is your house of treasure and no one in the world can interfere with it. If you won the Irish Sweepstakes and bought a house that needed furniture would you fill it with bits and pieces of rubbish? Your mind is your house and if you fill it with rubbish from the cinemas it will rot in your head. You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.

A library is a place where you learn what teachers were afraid to teach you.

For me, literacy means freedom. For the individual and for society.

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.