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Most people spend their time on the 'urgent' rather than on the 'important.'

Robert M. Hutchins

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Robert M. Hutchins
Age: 78 †
Born: 1899
Born: January 17
Died: 1977
Died: May 17
Educator
Pedagogue
University Teacher
Brooklyn
New York
Urgent
Spend
Rather
Important
Time
People

More quotes by Robert M. Hutchins

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Equality and justice, the two great distinguishing characteristics of democracy, follow inevitably from the conception of men, all men, as rational and spiritual beings.
Robert M. Hutchins
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The policy of the repression of ideas cannot work and never has worked. The alternative to it is the long difficult road of education. To this the American people have committed.
Robert M. Hutchins
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The college graduate is presented with a sheepskin to cover his intellectual nakedness.
Robert M. Hutchins
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More free time means more time to waste. The worker who used to have only a little time in which to get drunk and beat his wife now has time to get drunk, beat his wife - and watch TV.
Robert M. Hutchins
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Education is not to reform students or amuse them or to make them expert technicians. It is to unsettle their minds, widen their horizons, inflame their intellects, teach them to think straight, if possible.
Robert M. Hutchins
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There is only one justification for universities, as distinguished from trade schools. They must be centers of criticism.
Robert M. Hutchins
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We do not know what education can do for us, because we have never tried it.
Robert M. Hutchins
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It sometimes seems as though we were trying to combine the ideal of no schools at all with the democratic ideal of schools for everybody by having schools without education.
Robert M. Hutchins
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College football: I do not see the relationship of those highly industrialized affairs on Saturday afternoons to higher learning in America.
Robert M. Hutchins
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The most distressing aspect of the world into which you are going is its indifference to the basic issues, which now, as always, are moral issues.
Robert M. Hutchins
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Nature will not forgive those who fail to fulfill the law of their being. The law of human beings is wisdom and goodness, not unlimited acquisition.
Robert M. Hutchins
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When we listen to the radio, look at television and read the newspapers we wonder whether universal education has been the great boon that its supporters have always claimed it would be.
Robert M. Hutchins
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We can put television in its proper light by supposing that Gutenberg's great invention had been directed at printing only comic books.
Robert M. Hutchins
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Education can be dangerous. It is very difficult to make it not dangerous. In fact, it is almost impossible.
Robert M. Hutchins
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Nobody can read Freud without realizing that he was the scientific equivalent of another nuisance, George Bernard Shaw.
Robert M. Hutchins
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It is not so important to be serious as it is to be serious about the important things. The monkey wears an expression of seriousness which would do credit to any college student, but the monkey is serious because he itches.
Robert M. Hutchins
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...The task is overwhelming, and the chance is slight. We must take the chance or die.
Robert M. Hutchins
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To solve a problem it is necessary to think. It is necessary to think even to decide what facts to collect.
Robert M. Hutchins
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The best education for the best is the best education for all.
Robert M. Hutchins
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America's experiment with government of the people, by the people, and for the people depends not only on constitutional structure and organization but also on the commitment, person to person, that we make to each other.
Robert M. Hutchins