A Freedman Sampler

"I feel most comfortable in an institution that is primarily devoted to teaching students how to think, how to discover who they are, who are trained in the way that the framers of the Constitution were trained." "This Week With David Brinkley," September 6, 1987

"To the extent that an unqualified emphasis on 'western civilization' blocks access to non-western civilizations, it legitimates an assumption of European and American cultural superiority that will not withstand analysis. That assumption is as damaging our students individually as it is menacing to the world they will be compelled to understand and to shape." Address to the faculty, October26, 1987

"This college has demonstrated a capacity to inspire its graduates with a love of the institution which is virtually unequalled in American higher education. It will be essential in the years ahead that we preserve the fundamental nature of the Dartmouth experience at the same time that we continually seek to refine and strengthen it." Remarks to the facultyduring his introduction to Dartmouth,April 23, 1987

"As you commit yourself to defining a public self, I hope that you will also commit yourself to defining a private self: a self that yearns to understand the vast mysteries of creation and the universe; a self that can find peace in the still, dark hours of the night; a self that can address grief and tragedy and the terrible misunderstandings that can arise among the generations; a self that responds to poetry and music and dance; a self that is renewed by reflection and contemplation." Convocation speech, September 21, 1987

"I deplore a perversely provocative style of journalism that vulgarizes responsible conservative thought and is, in fact, an affront to it." Speech tothe faculty, March 28, 1988

"If I had a pipe dream, I'd like to be the Abraham Lincoln of Dartmouth to heal the warring factions." Interview with the Boston Globe,October 19, 1987

"In the end, we will be judged not by the shrillness of our rhetoric or the self-dramatization of our actions, but by the quiet, measured force of our reason." Inaugural speech, July 19,1987