Civilization depends not only upon the knowledge of the people, but upon the use they make of it. If knowledge be wrongfully used, civilization commits suicide. Broadly speaking, the college is not to educate the individual, but to educate society. The individual may be ignorant and vicious. If society have learning and virtue, that will sustain him. If society lacks learning and virtue, it perishes. Education must give not only power but direction. It must minister to the whole man or it fails.

Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary.

I know people who read interminably, book after book, from page to page, and yet I
should not call them 'well-read people'. Of course they 'know' an immense amount; but
their brain seems incapable of assorting and classifying the material which they have
gathered from books. They have not the faculty of distinguishing between what is
useful and useless in a book; so that they may retain the former in their minds and if
possible skip over the latter while reading it, if that be not possible, then — when once
read — throw it overboard as useless ballast. Reading is not an end in itself, but a means
to an end. Its chief purpose is to help towards filling in the framework which is made
up of the talents and capabilities that each individual possesses. Thus each one procures
for himself the implements and materials necessary for the fulfilment of his calling in
life, no matter whether this be the elementary task of earning one's daily bread or a
calling that responds to higher human aspirations. Such is the first purpose of reading.
And the second purpose is to give a general knowledge of the world in which we live.
In both cases, however, the material which one has acquired through reading must not
be stored up in the memory on a plan that corresponds to the successive chapters of the
book; but each little piece of knowledge thus gained must be treated as if it were a little
stone to be inserted into a mosaic, so that it finds its proper place among all the other
pieces and particles that help to form a general world-picture in the brain of the reader.
Otherwise only a confused jumble of chaotic notions will result from all this reading.
That jumble is not merely useless, but it also tends to make the unfortunate possessor of
it conceited. For he seriously considers himself a well-educated person and thinks that
he understands something of life. He believes that he has acquired knowledge, whereas
the truth is that every increase in such 'knowledge' draws him more and mo

A principal aim of education is to give students a taste for literature, for the books of life and power, and to accomplish this, it is necessary that their minds be held aloof from the babblement and discussions of the hour, that they may accustom themselves to take interest in the words and deeds of the greatest men, and so make themselves able and worthy to shape a larger and nobler future; but if their hours of leisure are spent over journals and reviews, they will, in later years, become the helpless victims of the newspaper habit.

What the Universities have mainly done—what I have found the University did for me, was that it taught me to read in various languages and various sciences, so that I could go into the books that treated of these things, and try anything I wanted to make myself master of gradually, as I found it suit me. Whatever you may think of all that, the clearest and most imperative duty lies on every one of you to be assiduous in your reading; and learn to be good readers, which is, perhaps, a more difficult thing than you imagine. Learn to be discriminative in your reading—to read all kinds of things that you have an interest in, and that you find to be really fit for what you are engaged in.

Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary

Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary.

The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think

Books are the tools of both teacher and pupil. A library is perhaps the most important adjunct of instruction. It is open to all and is used by all. In every department of science throughout the world the keenest intellects are at work, seeking for solutions to the unending series of problems that present themselves in the physical and natural world . 'Light, more light,' said the dying philosopher, and the longing of the world is but the echo of his last faint cry. To do our duty and to give reply to the many demands made upon us requires all the light and all the experience of other minds, wheresoever they may be found.

I have insisted on our own activity as essential to our progress; but we were not made to live or advance alone. Society is as needful to us as air or food. A child doomed to utter loneliness, growing up without sight or sound of human beings, would not put forth equal power with many brutes; and a man, never brought into contact with minds superior to his own, will probably run one and the same dull round of thought and action to the end of llfe.
It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds, and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are true levelers. They give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race.

The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.

Some conservatives have expressed outrage that the views of professors are at odds with the views of students, as if ideas were entitled to be represented in proportion to their popularity and students were entitled to professors who share their political or social values. One of the more important functions of college — that it exposes young people to ideas and arguments they have not encountered at home — is redefined as a problem.

The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think,

Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget this, and out American colleges will recede in their public importance whilst they grow richer every year.