Neil MacGregor Quotes

We stand in the shadow of Jefferson who believed that a society founded upon the rule of law and liberty was dependent upon public education and the diffusion of knowledge.

Education is not just another consumer item. It is the bedrock of our democracy.

Learned institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw a light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty & dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.

Let us by all wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving our liberties.

Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among people.

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.

If people who cherish freedom, who know the importance of mutual respect and are aware of the imperative necessity to establish a constructive and critical debate, if these people are not ready to speak out, to be more committed and visible, then we can expect sad, painful tomorrows. The choice is ours.

When I had made more money than I needed for myself and my family, I set up a foundation to promote the values and principles of a free and open society.

Without an educated populace, democracy cannot sustain itself.

As citizens of a free society, we have a duty to look critically at our world. But if we think we know what is wrong, we must act upon that knowledge.

Free people make the only milieu possible in society for the full gift of one's self to church, state, and family. Free people enjoy and sustain and feel with one another because they live for one another. The paths of life are intermingled lives.

As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress.

We are in a democratic society. It's our job to question.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Civics is not only how to run the country before it's your turn to run the country; it is, in fact, the study of power, practical political power. And you must start that process at an age level when kids' brains are still open and malleable.

The role of the teacher remains the highest calling of a free people. To the teacher, America entrusts her most precious resource, her children; and asks that they be prepared... to face the rigors of individual participation in a democratic society.

Join America taught English, an understanding of the U.S. Constitution, that the Bill of Rights is the ultimate insurance policy for a citizen, and that being a citizen is not an entitlement. And we also taught a bit of capitalism.

Liberty cannot be preserved, if the manners of the people are corrupted.

Tensions exist in any free society. But the freedom we enjoy rests on a foundation of individual liberty and shared moral values.

The people currently in charge have forgotten the first principle of an open society, namely that we may be wrong and that there has to be free discussion. That it's possible to be opposed to the policies without being unpatriotic.

On the diffusion of education among the people rest the preservation and perpetuation of our free institutions.

Being a reporter is at the very core of a democracy, being a free person in a free society.

The benefits of education and of useful knowledge, generally diffused throughout a community, are essential to the preservation of a free government.

No one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among mankind than I do, and none has greater confidence in its effect upwards, supporting free and good government.