… as it has been my lot in the peculiar position which I have occupied for more than half a century as counsel and adviser for a great corporation and its creators and the many successful men of business who have surrounded them, I have learned to know how men who have been denied in their youth the opportunities for education feel when they are in possession of fortunes, and the world seems at their feet. Then they painfully recognize their limitations, then they know their weakness, then they understand that there are things which money cannot buy, and that there are gratifications and triumphs which no fortune can secure. The one lament of all those men has been: “Oh, if I had been educated I would sacrifice all that I have to obtain the opportunities of the college, to be able to sustain not only conversation and discussion with the educated men with whom I come in contact, but competent also to enjoy what I see is a delight to them beyond anything which I know.”
My Memories of Eighty Years by Chauncey M. Depew (1921)
Lovely quote, but the liberal arts education may not be available any more. I went to CCNY in the early 60s and it was worthwhile, the core curriculum really did teach me a lot. Things were later drastically dumbed down. Is it really a lot of intellectual masturbation now? There,anywhere?