"Beneath these specifically religious forces and permeating the whole community there is, I think, a vaguer but deeper religion- the faith in enlightenment, the aspiration to be just, the sympathy with the multiform thoughts and labors of humanity. This is surely the noblest aspiration, and one which unites us to all ages and places in which men have cultivated reason. No one, I am sure, who has felt this high passion and freely fostered it in these halls, will put any place above Harvard in his affection. Some universities have greater beauty and a richer past, some have maturer scholars and more famous teachers, Yale herself has more unity, more energy, and greater fitness to our present conditions. Harvard, instead of all these advantages, has freedom, both from external trammels and the pleasant torpor of too fixed a tradition. She has freedom and a single eye for the truth, and these are enough to secure for her, if the world goes well, an incomparable future."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
George Santayana, in Harvard Monthly in 1892, as quoted by Samuel Eliot Morison in Three Centuries of Harvard (1936), Cambridge: Harvard University Press, seventh printing (1965), p. 484
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Harvard_University
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Harvard University
51 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Harvard University →
Related Quotes
"The notice of appeal is a first step in the government’s effort to have the ruling overturned. It does not provide le…"
"Todd Wolfson, president of the AAUP, said the administration’s appeal is “just a continuation of their shameless camp…"
"Harvard has ruined more niggers than bad liquor."
"I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston tele…"
"I was never fortunate enough to attend Harvard. Yet after the school’s stunning surrender to President Trump’s $500 m…"
"Americans across the political spectrum are realizing that for-profit universities and media outlets are anything but…"
"Our founders praised the free press and free academic inquiry as on par with free elections in safeguarding the repub…"
"In the 160 years since the end of the Civil War, American institutions have largely fulfilled their job of protecting…"
"If future generations are to have that high regard for the achievement of the human mind which is essential to civili…"
"The Trump administration will appeal a federal judge’s order reversing billions of dollars in funding cuts to Harvard…"