Top 75 Humanities Quotes

In this post, you will find great Humanities Quotes from famous people, such as Iain McGilchrist, Nick Denton, Steve Zissis, Jim Leach, Lisa Randall. You can learn and implement many lessons from these quotes.

I trained in medicine after pursuing an academic career

I trained in medicine after pursuing an academic career in the humanities, mainly because of my interest in the relationship between mind and body, and between mind and brain.
Iain McGilchrist
My background is economics and maths. I think one of the reasons I studied humanities at all, or even went into journalism, is because, like, science and maths wasn’t cool in England when I was growing up. No one ever talked to the engineering students at Oxford.
I always did plays, and when I went to NYU – and I didn’t go to Tisch, the theater school, because I was like, ‘Well, acting‘s not realistic. You can’t make a career out of it.’ So I just studied general studies and humanities at NYU, but I was doing plays while I was there. So I was sort of cheating.
Steve Zissis
The arts and humanities are vastly more important in troubled times.
Jim Leach
Creativity is essential to particle physics, cosmology, and to mathematics, and to other fields of science, just as it is to its more widely acknowledged beneficiaries – the arts and humanities.
I was never very good at school with… humanities… anything which was more a matter of opinion.
I want to support the whole idea of the humanities and teaching the humanities as being something that – even if it can’t be quantitatively measured as other subjects – it’s as fundamental to all education.
We need a self because the complexity of the chemical processes that make up our individual humanities exceeds the processing power of our brains.
At different times I taught humanities, social sciences and pre-vocational education.
I think this confusion leads intellectuals and artists themselves to believe that the elite arts and humanities are a kind of higher, exalted form of human endeavor.
We all admire great accomplishments in the sciences, arts, and humanities – but we rarely acknowledge how much we achieve in the course of our everyday lives.
The adequate study of culture, our own and those on the opposite side of the globe, can press on to fulfillment only as we learn today from the humanities as well as from the scientists.
Ruth Benedict
The humanities are not something that get you a pension and health insurance.
At different times I taught humanities, social sciences and pre-vocational education.
In Greenville, we were blessed to have lots of youth arts programs. I changed middle schools to go to an arts middle school. Then, when high school came, I went to normal high school for a little while before auditioning for the Governor‘s School for Arts and Humanities.
I’m a professor of media studies as well as humanities, and I’m an evangelist of popular culture, but when there’s only media, then there’s going to be a slow debasement of language, and that’s what I think we’re fighting.
The arts, sciences, humanities, physical education, languages and maths all have equal and central contributions to make to a student‘s education.
My mates Dominic Boyer and Cymene Howe have put together thirty one episodes of a really really nice podcast at Rice as part of the Center for Energy and Environmental Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The ‘Cultures of Energy Podcast’ is so good!
As the humanities and liberal arts are downsized, privatized, and commodified, higher education finds itself caught in the paradox of claiming to invest in the future of young people while offering them few intellectual, civic, and moral supports.
America is very decentralized in how it supports the humanities, unlike European countries where virtually everything stems from the central government.
Jim Leach
I’d love to go off to college to study photography, art history, humanities.
The humanities need to be defended today against the encroachments of physical science, as they once needed to be against the encroachment of theology.
I just thank my father and mother, my lucky stars, that I had the advantage of an education in the humanities.
I’d love to go off to college to study photography, art history, humanities.
I liked painting and drawing, and I liked humanities mainly – poetry, literature – this speculative attitude toward life.
Rafael Moneo
Many scholars working in the humanities have already shown interest in brain research. For years, contemporary theory in the humanities has left the body and biology out of their discussions.
I was always meant to study the humanities; I was no good at math or sciences. When it came time for me to work, it was Soviet times, and journalism wasn’t that free or interesting of a space. There was a lot of censorship; it was difficult.
The humanities need to be defended today against the encroachments of physical science, as they once needed to be against the encroachment of theology.
I love science and that time in history when science and the humanities were the same thing.
I liked painting and drawing, and I liked humanities mainly – poetry, literature – this speculative attitude toward life.
Rafael Moneo
The calling of the humanities is to make us truly human in the best sense of the word.
J. Irwin Miller
My education, according to the tradition of the Jesuit

My education, according to the tradition of the Jesuit school which I attended, had been centered on the ‘ancient humanities’, and I was strongly attracted to the more literary branches.
Grades can matter, especially for those students and parents who live for the next round of applications to graduate or professional schools. But there’s a problem with the grade emphasis. Math or science graduates earn more than students majoring in the humanities.
In Greenville, we were blessed to have lots of youth arts programs. I changed middle schools to go to an arts middle school. Then, when high school came, I went to normal high school for a little while before auditioning for the Governor‘s School for Arts and Humanities.
I was an English major in college with minors in Fine Arts and Humanities.
Sue Grafton
I just thank my father and mother, my lucky stars, that I had the advantage of an education in the humanities.
The adequate study of culture, our own and those on the opposite side of the globe, can press on to fulfillment only as we learn today from the humanities as well as from the scientists.
Ruth Benedict
I was a teacher for a long time. I taught at a community college: voice, theory, humanities. And nowadays, music education is a dying thing. Funding is being cut more and more and more.
Grades can matter, especially for those students and parents who live for the next round of applications to graduate or professional schools. But there’s a problem with the grade emphasis. Math or science graduates earn more than students majoring in the humanities.
The calling of the humanities is to make us truly human in the best sense of the word.
J. Irwin Miller
The humanities have been forced to disguise, both from themselves and their students, why their subjects really matter, for the sake of attracting money and prestige in a world obsessed by the achievements of science.
In the end, the humanities can only be defended by stressing how indispensable they are; and this means insisting on their vital role in the whole business of academic learning, rather than protesting that, like some poor relation, they don’t cost much to be housed.
I always did plays, and when I went to NYU – and I didn’t go to Tisch, the theater school, because I was like, ‘Well, acting‘s not realistic. You can’t make a career out of it.’ So I just studied general studies and humanities at NYU, but I was doing plays while I was there. So I was sort of cheating.
Steve Zissis
I have a long-term interest in the humanities.
Jim Leach
Our world is enriched when coders and marketers dazzle us with smartphones and tablets, but, by themselves, they are just slabs. It is the music, essays, entertainment and provocations that they access, spawned by the humanities, that animate them – and us.
I have a long-term interest in the humanities.
Jim Leach
Our culture is more shaped by the arts and humanities than it often is by politics.
Jim Leach
We need a self because the complexity of the chemical processes that make up our individual humanities exceeds the processing power of our brains.
I was a teacher for a long time. I taught at a community college: voice, theory, humanities. And nowadays, music education is a dying thing. Funding is being cut more and more and more.
We all admire great accomplishments in the sciences, arts, and humanities – but we rarely acknowledge how much we achieve in the course of our everyday lives.
The first thing you get from the humanities, when they’re well taught, is critical thinking. Philosophy in particular can play that role, not just in universities but in schools as well.
I’m a professor of media studies as well as humanities, and I’m an evangelist of popular culture, but when there’s only media, then there’s going to be a slow debasement of language, and that’s what I think we’re fighting.
Real men study law and engineering, while ideas and values are for sissies. The humanities should constitute the core of any university worth the name.
A serious problem in America is the gap between academe and the mass media, which is our culture. Professors of humanities, with all their leftist fantasies, have little direct knowledge of American life and no impact whatever on public policy.
As we have sought through the centuries to define ourselves as human beings and as nations through the prisms of history and literature, no small part of that effort has drawn us to the subject of war. We might even say that the humanities began with war and from war, and have remained entwined with it ever since.
I love science and that time in history when science and the humanities were the same thing.
The humanities are not something that get you a pension and health insurance.
I think the perception of there being a deep gulf between science and the humanities is false.
I think this confusion leads intellectuals and artists themselves to believe that the elite arts and humanities are a kind of higher, exalted form of human endeavor.
Today and always, there will be an obligation to pass on to the new generation the tradition of liberal scholarshipscientific or in the humanities – and to bring the understanding of things and human actions to everyone.
Frank Macfarlane Burnet
In the ’60s, I was teaching humanities at a college in upstate New York and trying to publish a novel I’d written in graduate school. But nothing was happening. So I moved to New York City and got a job as a messenger at a place that made movies.
I did get a very fine education, and not just in science. It took some pressure on the part of my elders to convince me that I really should take an interest in humanities.
The first months at Harvard were more than challenging,

The first months at Harvard were more than challenging, as I came to the realization that the humanities could be genuinely interesting, and, in fact, given the weaknesses of my background, very difficult.
Philip Warren Anderson
Nobody phrases it this way, but I think that artificial intelligence is almost a humanities discipline. It’s really an attempt to understand human intelligence and human cognition.
I’m big into social studies, the humanities. I really love history and world issues and philosophy and law.
Connor Jessup
I was an English major in college with minors in Fine Arts and Humanities.
Sue Grafton
The notion that every well educated person would have a mastery of at least the basic elements of the humanities, sciences, and social sciences is a far cry from the specialized education that most students today receive, particularly in the research universities.
The first months at Harvard were more than challenging, as I came to the realization that the humanities could be genuinely interesting, and, in fact, given the weaknesses of my background, very difficult.
Philip Warren Anderson
In South Carolina, there’s a lot of arts programs. So I was blessed enough to go to the Governor School For Arts & Humanities.
A serious problem in America is the gap between academe and the mass media, which is our culture. Professors of humanities, with all their leftist fantasies, have little direct knowledge of American life and no impact whatever on public policy.
The biology of mind bridges the sciences – concerned with the natural world – and the humanities – concerned with the meaning of human experience.
I want to support the whole idea of the humanities and teaching the humanities as being something that – even if it can’t be quantitatively measured as other subjects – it’s as fundamental to all education.
As the humanities and liberal arts are downsized, privatized, and commodified, higher education finds itself caught in the paradox of claiming to invest in the future of young people while offering them few intellectual, civic, and moral supports.
The imagination is an innate gift, but it needs refinement and cultivation; this is what the humanities provide.
In South Carolina, there’s a lot of arts programs. So I was blessed enough to go to the Governor School For Arts & Humanities.