Liberal Art Education Quotes & Sayings

The fine arts, both in those who cultivate and those only who admire them, open and expand the mind to great ideas. They inspire liberal feelings, create a harmony of temper, favorable to a sense of justice and a habit of moderation in our social intercourse. — Joel Barlow

What is desperately needed ... is the skepticism and the sense of history that a liberal arts education provides. — Felix Rohatyn

A liberal education forms ... a single body. Those, therefore, who from tender years receive instruction in the various forms of learning, recognize the same stamp on all the arts, and an intercourse between all studies, and so they more readily comprehend them all. — Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

Higher educating is defaulting on its obligations to offer young people a quality and broad-based education. This is true in part because the liberal arts and humanities have fallen out of favor in a culture that equates education with training. — Henry Giroux

Unless you took courses in architecture, engineering, or pre-med, the rest of your liberal arts education hardly prepares you for life as the business warrior and champion you envision yourself to be. — Gene Simmons

I think the more you have a generalist perspective, I think sometimes the more you can kind of see through the forest and the trees. And when it gets a little bit cloudy, you know, have some sense of, "Well, maybe this might happen or maybe that might happen." So I really am a big believer in liberal arts education. I think it's better - particularly in these kind of uncertain times - to know a little bit about a lot of things as opposed to being expert in one thing. — Steve Case

Where philosophy ends, poetry must commence. There should not be a common point of view, a natural manner of thinking which standsin contrast to art and liberal education, or mere living; that is, one should not conceive of a realm of crudeness beyond the boundaries of education. Every conscious link of an organism should not perceive its limits without a feeling for its unity in relation to the whole. For example, philosophy should not only be contrasted to non-philosophy, but also to poetry. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

The purpose of a liberal arts education is to learn that a person can like both cats and dogs. — Marva Collins

We seem to have forgotten that the expression "a liberal education" originally meant among the Romans one worthy of free men; while the learning of trades and professions by which to get your livelihood merely, was considered worthy of slaves only. But taking a hint from the word, I would go a step further and say, that it is not the man of wealth and leisure simply, though devoted to art, or science, or literature, who, in a true sense, is liberally educated, but only the earnest and free man. — Henry David Thoreau

The basic purpose of a liberal arts education is to liberate the human being to exercise his or her potential to the fullest. — Barbara M. White

To be thoroughly imbued, with the liberal arts refines the manners, and makes men to be mild and gentle in their conduct. — Ovid

A basic flaw in contemporary American educational philosophy as much as it is under the influence of the late John Dewey, is it s failure to grasp the essentially artistic character of teaching. Due to an inflated opinion of "science" and all things supposedly "scientific," educators have been loathe to admit that teaching is an art, not a science. The art of teaching is a mingling of the liberal and the dramatic arts. Above and beyond the subject matter, the teacher actually needs but two assets: (a) a grasp of the liberal arts of grammar, rhetoric,and logic; (b) a mastery of the dramatic art of presentation." - pg 126 footnote 1. — Frederick D. Wilhelmsen

In the world of language, or in other words in the world of art and liberal education, religion necessarily appears as mythology or as Bible. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Free speech is essential to education, especially to a liberal education, which encourages the search for truths in art and science. If expression is restricted, the range of inquiry is also curtailed ... The beneficiaries of a free society have a duty to pursue the truth and to protect the freedom of expression that makes possible the search for a new enlightenment. — Norman Dorsen

You parents can provide no better gift for your children than an education in the liberal arts. House and home burn down, but an education is easy to carry along. — Martin Luther

I got a liberal arts education just because I felt like I should to keep my parents happy, but it was for them. If it was up to me, I would've just moved to New York. — Kathryn Hahn

I deplore the tendency, in some institutions, to go directly toward training for a trade or profession or something and ignoring the liberal arts. It is the foundation of education. — Ronald Reagan

Why not spend that time on art: painting, sculpting, charcoal, pastel, oils? Are words or numbers more important than images? Who decides this? Does algebra move you to tears? Can plural possessives express the feelings in your heart? If you don't learn art now, you will never learn to breathe! — Laurie Halse Anderson

I wonder if more students would do better in elementary and high school if teachers taught more about individual exploration of subjects and less about sliding smoothly along observational ruts. Exploration is a liberal art, because it is an art that liberates, that frees, that opens away from narrowness. And it is fun. — John R. Stilgoe