Alfred Whitney Griswold Quotes

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

He who dares not reason, is a slave.

A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.

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.

A knowledge of different literatures is the best way to free one's self from the tyranny of any of them.

A university is supposed to show you ideas that offend you and make you feel uncomfortable,

Neither acquiescence in skepticism nor acquiescence in dogma is what education should produce.

One must be truthful and honest in his approach; a constant independent inquiry and not blindly following a certain blue print laid down by others

As soon as we cease to pry about at random, we shall come to rely upon accredited bodies of authoritative dogma; and as soon as we come to rely upon accredited bodies of authoritative dogma, not only are the days of our liberty over, but we have lost the password that has hitherto opened to us the gates of success as well.

The search for truth is a cooperative, unending endeavor. We can, and should, engage in it to the extent we can and encourage others to do so as well, seeking to free ourselves from constraints imposed by coercive institutions, dogma, irrationality, excessive conformity and lack of initiative and imagination, and numerous other obstacles.

A liberally educated person meets new ideas with curiosity and fascination. An illiberally educated person meets new ideas with fear.

I hate the idea of sheltering kids from challenging books. It's just another form of conservative fear that promotes ignorance more than anything else.

Others indeed may talk, and write, and fight about liberty, and make an outward pretence to it; but the free-thinker alone is truly free.

To become self-aware, people must be allowed to hear a plurality of opinions and then make up their own minds. They must be allowed to say, write and publish whatever they want. Freedom of expression is the most basic, but fundamental, right. Without it, human beings are reduced to automatons.

Well, where there is freedom doubt itself must be free.

Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.

The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.

My idea of education is to unsettle the minds of the young and inflame their intellects.

My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out.

I think well-read people - the world is open to them.

I read books like mad, but I am careful to to let anything I read influence me.

College is a refuge from hasty judgment.

It is very nearly impossible... to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.

Science exists, moreover, only as a journey toward truth. Stifle dissent and you end that journey.

If we would guide by the light of reason we must let our minds be bold.