Top 15 Vincent Massey Quotes

It would be foolish and wrong to ignore the fact that all our universities today tread a very dangerous path. Increasingly, they are accepting government money because they are doing things that government wants done. How great a peril is this in a democracy?

History is the necessary food of good and noble sentiments. It ought to give us at once humility and confidence in the face of greatness.

Old wives' tales are not enough in a day when old wives and old men, too, are constantly moving away from their labours.

How great a quality is horse sense! Someone has defined it as that something which keeps horses from betting on men!

In fact, in the far North one sees the northern lights facing south!

Technology has been defined, perhaps a little ungenerously, as "a long Greek name for a bag of tools".

Canada is not a melting-pot. Canada is an association of peoples who have, and cherish, great differences but who work together because they can respect themselves and each other.

We must pass through the barriers of language and race, of geography and religion, of custom and tradition and we must build on a common foundation.

Truth must the guide of those who hold the power; but humility is their sign, the promise that their privileges are in safe hands.

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

The great menace of civilization in the present is that we offer an education with too little regard for the roots.

It is worthy of notice that many of this generation, fed on text-books, on anthologies and on abstracts, cannot read.

This visit "north of 60" was to complete what might be called at least a preliminary survey. I arrived here and realized that my survey had hardly begun.

In opening and conquering a country great and wild and rich - a country indeed not yet fully known or conquered - we have still to learn more about ourselves and each other.

We can best serve the cause of Canadian unity and understanding by living first in and through and then beyond our own immediate traditions.