Humanities Education Quotes

The adequate study of culture, our own and those on the opposite side of the globe, can press on to fulfillment only as we learn today from the humanities as well as from the scientists.

By faithful study of the nobler arts, our nature's softened, and more gentle grows.

The humanities need to be defended today against the encroachments of physical science, as they once needed to be against the encroachment of theology.

There's a lot to be said for an American-style liberal-arts education, which prevents young people from professionalizing right away.

That tertiary education is under a sustained assault by a political and - it often seems - social consensus that equates all education with training for increased productivity, only makes academe a still more promising environment for a contrarian.

At different times I taught humanities, social sciences and pre-vocational education.

The humanities have been forced to disguise, both from themselves and their students, why their subjects really matter, for the sake of attracting money and prestige in a world obsessed by the achievements of science.

Higher educating is defaulting on its obligations to offer young people a quality and broad-based education. This is true in part because the liberal arts and humanities have fallen out of favor in a culture that equates education with training.

What use could the humanities be in a digital age? University students focusing on the humanities may end up, at least in their parents' nightmares, as dog-walkers for those majoring in computer science. But, for me, the humanities are not only relevant but also give us a toolbox to think seriously about ourselves and the world.

The humanities should constitute the core of any university worth the name.

I have a long-term interest in the humanities.

In the end, the humanities can only be defended by stressing how indispensable they are; and this means insisting on their vital role in the whole business of academic learning, rather than protesting that, like some poor relation, they don't cost much to be housed.

It's certainly no secret that American students are taught less and less about the canonical literary masterpieces of the past, and there is no shortage of people who believe that what little they're required to learn in school is still too much.

I tried without much success to learn a little of the humanities and the arts, but even passing the courses in art history and music history was a challenge.

Our understanding of Shakespeare already depends largely on the vitality of Renaissance elements in our education. Each man must live in his own generation, as the saying is; but the generations are bound together by the golden links of the great tradition of civilization.

Immersing myself in Shakespeare's plays, reading them closely under the guidance of a brilliant, plain-spoken professor changed my life: It opened up the great questions; it put my petty problems into perspective. It got me out of bed in the mornings and kept me in the library late into the night.

A taste for liberal art is necessary to complete the character of a gentleman, Science alone is hard and mechanical. It exercises the understanding upon things out of ourselves, while it leaves the affections unemployed, or engrossed with our own immediate, narrow interests.

One of the first courses I ever taught at Dartmouth was on the Bible as literature.

The neglect of the humanities in present-day education is doubtless not a cause but a symptom of an age.

I want to support the whole idea of the humanities and teaching the humanities as being something that - even if it can't be quantitatively measured as other subjects - it's as fundamental to all education.

Engineers have a very limited education and background, I think you need to move into the broader humanities in order to become a total person.

There is a lot of talk in the academy about the death of the humanities. Based on my readers' response and their interest in history and literature and art, the death of the humanities has been grossly overstated.

What would be the nicest thing I could say about Newt Gingrich? He may be one of the great supporters of the humanities, because you have people who don't want to study the social sciences, because it's not profitable, and now Newt, as the highest-paid historian in American history, may be an encouragement to people to study history.

Professors of classics - not even a professor of English - professors of classics, they're something sacred; it's almost like being a priest.