The business of saying, in advance of a serious effort, that people are not capable of achieving a good education is too strongly reminiscent of the … - Robert Maynard Hutchins

If many great books seem unreadable and unintelligible ... it may be because we have not for a long time learned to read by reading them. Great books teach people not only how to read them, but how to read all other books.

We do not seem to get very far by talking about democracy. We know that Germany is not one. She says so. We know that Russia is not one, though Stalin says she is one. We are not sure about some elements in the government of England and France. We are not altogether sure about this country. The reason is, of course, that we do not know what a democracy is or grasp the fundamental notions on which it rests. [...] Is democracy a good form of government? Is the United States a democracy? If we are to prepare to defend democracy we must be able to answer these questions. I repeat that our ability to answer them is much more important than the quantity or quality of aeroplanes, bombs, tanks, flame-throwers, and miscellaneous munitions that we can hurl at the enemy.

Until lately the West has regarded it as self-evident that the road to education lay through great books. No man was educated unless he was acquainted with the masterpieces of his tradition. There never was much doubt in anybody's mind about which the masterpieces were. They were the books that had endured and that the common voice of mankind called the finest creations, in writing, of the Western tradition.