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

Since many propositions in the Great Conversation have not been arrived at by experiment ... or empirical verification, we often hear that the Conversation, though perhaps interesting to the antiquarian as setting forth the bizarre superstitions entertained by "thinkers" before the dawn of experimental science, can have no relevance to us now, when experimental science and its methods have at least revealed these superstitions for what they are.

Liberal education was aristocratic in the sense that it was the education of those who enjoyed leisure and political power. If it was the right education for those who had leisure and political power, then it is the right education for everybody today.

Since we are confused about ends, we do not know how to employ means. Though our means of improving the material conditions of existence exceed those of any previous generation, we could not use them, in the great depression, to protect our fellow-citizens from starvation and despair. The means of improving the material conditions of existence are now diverted to the extermination of mankind on a greater scale than ever before.