Democracy killed by apathy ~ Hutchins

“The democratic enterprise is imperiled if any one of us says, ‘I do not have to try to think for myself, or make the most of myself, or become a citizen of the world republic of learning.’ The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.”

~ Robert Maynard Hutchins, The Great Conversation

Books over our heads needed ~ Mortimer Adler

‎"I think it's terribly important for each of us, everyone, to find a number of books that are over their heads. Because if a person reads only books that are on the level of his head, he can't lift his head up. It's the books that are over one's head, which one only partially understands at first and must work at to understand more, that can possibly elevate you." 

~ Mortimer Adler

Life improved by literature ~ Sir Richard Livingstone

“We are tied down, all our days and for the greater part of our days, to the commonplace. That is where contact with great thinkers, great literature helps. In their company we are still in the ordinary world, but it is the ordinary world transfigured and seen through the eyes of wisdom and genius. And some of their vision becomes our own.”

~ Sir Richard Livingstone

Guided by experience - William James

“There are moments of sentimental and mystical experience . . . that carry an enormous sense of inner authority and illumination with them when they come. But they come seldom, and they do not come to everyone; and the rest of life makes either no connection with them, or tends to contradict them more than it confirms them. Some persons follow more the voice of the moment in these cases, some prefer to be guided by the average results.” 

~ William James