Vincent Massey Quotes

#1. Technology has been defined, perhaps a little ungenerously, as "a long Greek name for a bag of tools".

Vincent Massey

#2. In opening and conquering a country great and wild and rich - a country indeed not yet fully known or conquered - we have still to learn more about ourselves and each other.

Vincent Massey

#3. How great a quality is horse sense! Someone has defined it as that something which keeps horses from betting on men!

Vincent Massey

#4. I have had what might be called a post graduate course in the most important subject for all Canadians - Canada itself.

Vincent Massey

#5. Truth must the guide of those who hold the power; but humility is their sign, the promise that their privileges are in safe hands.

Vincent Massey

#6. History is the necessary food of good and noble sentiments. It ought to give us at once humility and confidence in the face of greatness.

Vincent Massey

#7. It would be foolish and wrong to ignore the fact that all our universities today tread a very dangerous path. Increasingly, they are accepting government money because they are doing things that government wants done. How great a peril is this in a democracy?

Vincent Massey

#8. The great menace of civilization in the present is that we offer an education with too little regard for the roots.

Vincent Massey

#9. Old wives' tales are not enough in a day when old wives and old men, too, are constantly moving away from their labours.

Vincent Massey

#10. Canada is not a melting-pot. Canada is an association of peoples who have, and cherish, great differences but who work together because they can respect themselves and each other.

Vincent Massey

#11. We can best serve the cause of Canadian unity and understanding by living first in and through and then beyond our own immediate traditions.

Vincent Massey

#12. In fact, in the far North one sees the northern lights facing south!

Vincent Massey

#13. The age which we live in is not suited to idle complacency or to pleasant dreams of past greatness.

Vincent Massey

#14. The neglect of the humanities in present-day education is doubtless not a cause but a symptom of an age.

Vincent Massey

#15. It is the University's function to turn out well-balanced persons with an understanding of themselves and of their place in life.

Vincent Massey