Alfred Whitney Griswold Quotes and Quotation
Alfred Whitney Griswold
(October 27, 1906 - April 19, 1963) Historian; President of Yale University, 1950-1963
- Could Hamlet have been written by a committee, or the Mona Lisa painted by a club? Could the New Testament have been composed as a conference report? Creative ideas do not spring from groups. They spring from individuals. The divine spark leaps from the finger of God to the finger of Adam, whether it takes ultimate shape in a law of physics or a law of the land, a poem or a policy, a sonata or a mechanical computer.
- Address at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (June 9, 1957)
- Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.
- Essays on Education quoted in The New York Times (February 24, 1959)
- Variant ending: The source of better ideas is freedom. The surest path to wisdom is liberal education.
- Liberal learning is both a safeguard against false ideas of freedom and a source of true ones.
- quoted by John F. Kennedy in a speech at Yale University (Jun. 11, 1962)
- quoted by John F. Kennedy in a speech at Yale University (Jun. 11, 1962)
Attributed:
- A Socrates in every classroom.
- It is a barren kind of criticism which tells you what a thing is not.
- Self-respect cannot be hunted. It cannot be purchased. It is never for sale. It cannot be fabricated out of public relations. It comes to us when we are alone, in quiet moments, in quiet places, when we suddenly realize that, knowing the good, we have done it; knowing the beautiful, we have served it; knowing the truth, we have spoken it.
- There will be certain things in a man that have to be won, not forced; inspired, not compelled.
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