Civilization is not a standard of living. It is not a way of life. Civilization is the deliberate pursuit of a common ideal. Education is the deliber… - Robert Maynard Hutchins

The Great Conversation began before the beginnings of experimental science. But the birth of the Conversation and the birth of science were simultaneous. The earliest of the pre-Socratics were investigating and seeking to understand natural phenomena; among them were men who used mathematical notions for this purpose. Even experimentation is not new; it has been going on for hundreds of years. But faith in experimentation as an exclusive method is a modern manifestation. ... It is now regarded in some quarters ... as the sole method of obtaining knowledge of any kind.

As Whitehead has said "If it were easy, the book ought to be burned; for it is cannot be educational. In education, as elsewhere, the broad primrose path leads to a nasty place."

There is a sense in which every great book is always over the head of the reader: he can never fully comprehend it. That is why these books are great teachers; they demand the attention of the reader and keep his intelligence on the stretch.