36+ Gilbert Highet Quotes On Education, Society And Religion

Gilbert Highet was a Scottish writer, literary critic and academic. He was born in 1906 in Glasgow and was educated at the University of Glasgow and Balliol College, Oxford. He wrote extensively on classical literature, and was a professor of literature at Columbia University in New York from 1947 until his death in 1978. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Gilbert Highet on education, society, religion.

Top 10 Gilbert Highet Quotes

1. What is politics but persuading the public to vote for this and support that and endure these for the promise of those?
2. Many people have played themselves to death. Many people have eaten and drunk themselves to death. Nobody ever thought himself to death.
3. These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves.
4. A very wise old teacher once said: I consider a day's teaching wasted if we do not all have one hearty laugh.
5. He meant that when people laugh together, they cease to be young and old, master and pupils, jailer and prisoners. They become a single group of human beings enjoying its existence.
6. The relation between parents and children is essentially based on teaching.
7. If you do not actually like boys and girls, or young men and young women, give up teaching.
8. Many of the twisted minds and crippled characters in the world were made by careless parents who kept their children away from knives and fires, but put permanent scars on their souls.
9. Bad teaching wastes a great deal of effort, and spoils many lives which might have been full of energy and happiness.
10. The best school in the world will scarcely save a boy who hates the school and the purpose it serves and the society that created it.

Gilbert Highet Short Quotes

• A good teacher is a determined person
• Language is a living thing
• A teacher must believe in the value and interest of his subject as a doctor believes in health.
• Most Americans do not like poetry. We may respect it, but we do not enjoy it.
• The young do not demand omniscience. They know it is unattainable. They do demand sincerity.
• Know the subject; love the subject; like your students; know your students.

Gilbert Highet Quotes About People

Like all great teachers he knew that a picture is worth a thousand words and that people learn most quickly by doing something or seeing something done. — Gilbert Highet

Many of the snarly bad-tempered teachers whom we remember with hatred were really nice people soured by years of anxiety and penny-pinching. — Gilbert Highet

The aim of those who try to control thought is always the same. They find one single explanation of the world, one system of thought and action that will (they believe) cover everything; and then they try to impose that on all thinking people. — Gilbert Highet

Gilbert Highet Famous Quotes And Sayings

The chief aim of education is to show you, after you make a livelihood, how to enjoy living; and you can live longest and best and most rewardingly by attaining and preserving the happiness of learning. — Gilbert Highet

The mind never need stop growing. Indeed, one of the few experiences which never pall is the experience of watching one's own mind and how it produces new interests, responds to new stimuli, and develops new thoughts, apparently without effort and almost independently of one's own conscious control. — Gilbert Highet

The Sonnets of Shakespeare have the fascination of an autobiography, without its clarity. It is like reading an important document in a cave by the light of matches which keep blowing out. — Gilbert Highet

Poetry is halfway between prose and music: it is sometimes like an intimate conversation, in words and phrases which need not be fully uttered, and sometimes like dancing and wordless music. — Gilbert Highet

Language is a living thing. We can feel it changing. Parts of it become old: they drop off and are forgotten. New pieces bud out, spread into leaves, and become big branches, proliferating. — Gilbert Highet

The teacher's chief difficulty is poverty. He (or she) belongs to a badly paid profession. He cannot dress and live like a workman, but he is sometimes paid as little as an unskilled laborer. — Gilbert Highet

Leisure is one of the three greatest rewards of being a teacher. It is, unfortunately, the privilege which teachers most often misuse. — Gilbert Highet

History is a strange experience. The world is quite small now; but history is large and deep. Sometimes you can go much farther by sitting in your own home and reading a book of history, than by getting onto a ship or an airplane and traveling a thousand miles. — Gilbert Highet

I believe that much of the maladjustment in our societies is caused, not by malevolence and corruption, but simply by ignorance. — Gilbert Highet

Wherever there are beginners and experts, old and young, there is some kind of learning going on, some kind of teaching. We are all pupils and we are all teachers. — Gilbert Highet

The real duty of man is not to extend his power or multiply his wealth beyond his needs, but to enrich and enjoy his imperishable possession: his soul. — Gilbert Highet

You [the teacher] do not merely insert a lot of facts, if you teach them [the students] properly. It is not like injecting 500 cc. of serum, or administering a year's dose of vitamins. — Gilbert Highet

The wise teacher knows that 55 minutes of work plus 5 minutes laughter are worth twice as much as 60 minutes of unvaried work. — Gilbert Highet

Nobody has ever thought himself to death. The chief danger confronting us is not age. It is laziness, sloth, routine, stupidity, - forcing their way in like wind through the shutters, seeping into the cellar like swamp water. — Gilbert Highet

A period of high civilization is one in which thoughts fly freely from mind to mind, from one country to another-yes, from the past into the present. — Gilbert Highet

These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves. From each of them goes out its own voice... and just as the touch of a button on our set will fill the room with music, so by taking down one of these volumes and opening it, one can call into range the voice of a man far distant in time and space, and hear him speaking to us, mind to mind, heart to heart. — Gilbert Highet

At certain times and in certain schools it is orthodox to be a rebel; and in general it is a very poor class that does not contain at least three pupils who can be counted on to oppose the teachers authority and loudly and persistently to question everything he says. — Gilbert Highet

Life Lessons by Gilbert Highet

1. Gilbert Highet taught that learning is a lifelong process, and that curiosity and exploration should be embraced in order to gain knowledge and wisdom.
2. He also believed that the pursuit of excellence should be encouraged, and that the only way to achieve success is through hard work and dedication.
3. Finally, Highet believed that one should strive to live a life of integrity and honesty, and that true happiness can only be found through meaningful relationships with others.