Gilbert Highet
Overview
 
Gilbert Arthur Highet was a Scottish-American classicist, academic, writer, intellectual, critic and literary historian.

Born in Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

, Gilbert Highet is best known as a mid-20th-century teacher of the humanities
Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....

 in the United States. He attended Glasgow University and Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....

, becoming a fellow of St John's College, Oxford
St John's College, Oxford
__FORCETOC__St John's College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford, one of the larger Oxford colleges with approximately 390 undergraduates, 200 postgraduates and over 100 academic staff. It was founded by Sir Thomas White, a merchant, in 1555, whose heart is buried in the chapel of...

  in 1932, where he remained for six years. He had met his wife, the well-known novelist Helen MacInnes, while they were fellow-students at Glasgow, and they married in 1932.
Quotations

The aim of those who try to control thought is always the same. They find one single explanation of the world, one system of thought and action that will (they believe) cover everything; and then they try to impose that on all thinking people.

Man's Unconquerable Mind (1954)

The chief aim of education is to show you, after you make a livelihood, how to enjoy living; and you can live longest and best and most rewardingly by attaining and preserving the happiness of learning.

The Immortal Profession: The Joys of Teaching and Learning (1976)

Nobody has ever thought himself to death. The chief danger confronting us is not age. It is laziness, sloth, routine, stupidity, — forcing their way in like wind through the shutters, seeping into the cellar like swamp water.

The Immortal Profession: The Joys of Teaching and Learning (1976)

 
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