Look to the past to help create the future. Look to science and to poetry. Combine innovation and interpretation. We need the best of both. And it is universities that best provide them.
Interpretation
Understanding our history and embracing both science and the arts can guide us towards a better future.
This quote emphasizes the importance of learning from our past while integrating both scientific inquiry and creative expression to foster innovation. Drew Gilpin Faust suggests that universities serve as pivotal environments for developing this dual focus, thereby equipping individuals and society with the tools needed to navigate and shape the future effectively.
In practice
In a graduation speech to emphasize the importance of combining diverse fields of study.
When I was growing up in Virginia, the Civil War was presented to me as glorious with dramatic courage and military honor. Later, I realized how death was central to the reality. It was at the core of women's lives. It's what they talked about most.
High school students ought to seek out campus communities where they feel not only empowered to engage their talents, but also challenged to leave their comfort zones. The ability to embrace new opportunities emerges, in part, from a willingness to take risks and to fail.
As a kid, I was growing up in an era of celebration of the Civil War centennial, with a lot of 'Lost Cause' emphasis on the Confederacy. I used to play Civil War soldiers with my brothers as a child, and my older brother always insisted that he got to be Lee, and I got be Grant. I never knew that Grant won until quite some time had passed.
We have been telling and hearing and reading war stories for millennia. Their endurance may lie in their impossibility; they can never be complete, for the tensions and the contradictions within them will never be eliminated or resolved. That challenge is essential to their power and their attraction. War stories matter.
I've always done more than I ever thought I would. Becoming a professor - I never would have imagined that. Writing books - I never would have imagined that. Getting a Ph.D. - I'm not sure I would even have imagined that. I've lived my life a step at a time. Things sort of happened.
I lived in a world where social arrangements were taken for granted and assumed to be timeless. A child's obligation was to learn these usages, not to question them. The complexities of racial deportment were of a piece with learning manners and etiquette more generally.
It isn’t what the book costs. It’s what it will cost you if you don’t read it.
Teachers shouldn't make the mistake of always thinking they're the smartest person in the room
Respect children because they're human beings and they deserve respect, and they'll grow up to be better people.
We cannot always build a future for our youth, but we can always build our youth for the future.
Treat your audience like poets and geniuses and they’ll have the chance to become them.
Young cat! If you keep Your eyes open enough, Oh, the stuff you will learn! The most wonderful stuff!
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