Alfred Whitney Griswold
Alfred Whitney Griswold
Alfred Whitney Griswold, who went by his second given name, was an American historian and educator. He served as 16th President of Yale University from 1951 to 1963, during which he built much of Yale's modern scientific research infrastructure, especially on Science Hill...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEducator
Date of Birth27 October 1906
CountryUnited States of America
against bad censor history run sure weapon
In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.
divine finger god leaps mechanical poem shape spark takes ultimate whether
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.
graduation philosophy college
A college education is not a quantitative body of memorized knowledge salted away in a card file. It is a taste for knowledge, a taste for philosophy, if you will; a capacity to explore, to question to perceive relationships, between fields of knowledge and experience.
criticism kind barren
It is a barren kind of criticism which tells you what a thing is not.
book ideas jail
Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail
smile nice men
This man, Comrades, has a nice smile, but he has iron teeth.
art independent opportunity
The liberal arts inform and enlighten the independent citizen of a democracy in the use of his own resources.... They enlarge his capacity for self-knowledge and expand his opportunities for self-improvement.... They are the wellsprings of a free society.
classroom
A Socrates in every classroom.
ideas source true-ones
Liberal learning is both a safeguard against false ideas of freedom and a source of true ones.
clubs mona-lisa conferences
Could Hamlet have been written bya committee, or the Mona Lisa painted by a club? Could the NewTestament have been composed as a conference report?
men atheism inspired
There will be certain things in a man that have to be won, not forced; inspired, not compelled.
loyalty government morality
Certain things we cannot accomplish... by any process of government. We cannot legislate intelligence. We cannot legislate morality. No, and we cannot legislate loyalty, for loyalty is a kind of morality.
order may
Things have got to be wrong in order that they may be deplored.
good-life men enemy
There are certain things in a man that have to be won, not forced; inspired, not compelled. Among these are many, I should say most, of the things that constitute the good life. All are essential to democracy. All are proof against its enemies.