Alfred Whitney Griswold, who went by his second given name, (1906–63) was an American historian and educator. He served as 16th President of Yale University from 1951 to 1963, during which he built much of Yale’s modern scientific research infrastructure, especially on Science Hill.
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Self-respect cannot be hunted. It cannot be purchased. It is never for sale. It cannot be fabricated out of public relations. It comes to us when we are alone, in quiet moments, in quiet places, when e suddenly realize that, knowing the good, we have done it; knowing the beautiful, we have served it; knowing the truth we have spoken it.
—Alfred Whitney Griswold
Topics: Self-respect
Could Hamlet have been written by a committee, or the Mona Lisa painted by a club? Could the New Testament have been composed as a conference report? Creative ideas do not spring from groups. They spring from individuals. The divine spark leaps from the finger of God to the finger of Adam, whether it takes ultimate shape in a law of physics or a law of the land, a poem or a policy, a sonata or a mechanical computer.
—Alfred Whitney Griswold
A college education is not a quantitative body of memorized knowledge salted away in a card file. It is a taste for knowledge, a taste for philosophy, if you will; a capacity to explore, to question to perceive relationships, between fields of knowledge and experience.
—Alfred Whitney Griswold
Topics: Graduation
Books won’t stay banned. They won’t burn. Ideas won’t go to jail. 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.
—Alfred Whitney Griswold
Topics: Ideas, Weapon
Things have got to be wrong in order that they may be deplored.
—Alfred Whitney Griswold
Topics: Right, Rightness, Adversity, Difficulties
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