Robert M. Hutchins

“The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives.”

“The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.”

“Whenever I feel like exercising, I lie down until the feeling passes.”

“A university is a community of scholars.”

“The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.”

“It is not so important to be serious as it is to be serious about the important things.”

“The best education for the best is the best education for all.”

“A liberal education... frees a man from the prison-house of his class, race, time, place, background, family and even his nation.”

“The purpose of a university is not to make engineers, but to make citizens.”

“We do not know what education can do for us, because we have never really tried it.”

“What is honored in a country is cultivated there.”

“Freedom of inquiry, freedom of discussion, and freedom of teaching—without these a university cannot exist.”

“The good citizen is the man who, first of all, understands the importance of the common good.”

“If the object of education is the improvement of men, then clearly the best education is that which improves them most.”

“A college should not be a prep school for professional schools.”