The great books ... afford us the best examples of man's efforts to seek the truth, both about the nature of things and about human conduct, by metho… - Robert Maynard Hutchins

In education ... whenever a proposal is made that looks toward increased intellectual effort on the part of students, professors will always say that the students cannot so the work. My observation leads me to think that what this usually means is that the professors cannot or will not do the work ... When, in spite of the opposition of the professors, the change is introduced, the students, in my experience, have always responded nobly.

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.

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.