Quotes by Drew Gilpin Faust - Page 1 | QuoteForever

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Mortality defines the human condition.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Human Condition
Mortality
Condition
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A leader has to keep saying the same things over and over again.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Leader
Saying The Same Thing Over And Over
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I’m not the woman president of Harvard, I’m the president of Harvard.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Harvard
President
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I've had dialogues with my dead mother over the 40 years since she died.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Died
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Leadership is about moving people from where they are to where you hope they'll go.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Moving
People
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If you don't pursue what you think will be most meaningful, you will regret it. Life is long. There is always time for Plan B. But don't begin with it.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Meaningful
Regret
Thinking
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I have always loved animals, and as a child, I read a lot of horse books. I had a particular favorite called 'Silver Snaffles' that my mother gave away.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Horse
Silver
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The ability to recognize opportunities and move in new - and sometimes unexpected - directions will benefit you no matter your interests or aspirations.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Opportunity
Benefits
Moving
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For all its ubiquity and its universality, war offers the attraction of the extraordinary - the escape from the gray everyday, from the humdrum into higher things.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Attraction
Everyday
Extraordinary
Humdrum
Offers
Universality
Escape
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The American Civil War produced carnage that has often been thought reserved for the combination of technological proficiency and inhumanity characteristic of a later time.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
War
Carnage
Characteristics
Civil War
Combination
Inhumanity
Reserved
Characteristic
Civil
Produced
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Look to the past to help create the future. Look to science and to poetry. Combine innovation and interpretation. We need the best of both. And it is universities that best provide them.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Innovation
Needs
Past
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One of the major jobs of the Harvard president is to choose the deans. I've had the opportunity to choose a considerable number of deans already, so I've learned a lot in the process in doing it.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Harvard
Considerable
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We are in an international marketplace for talent, and American colleges and universities need to be able to attract students and faculty from around the world if we want to sustain our excellence.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Excellence
Faculty
Marketplace
Attract
Colleges
Sustain
Universities
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I often read nonfiction with a pencil in hand. I love the feel, the smell, the design, the weight of a book, but I also enjoy the convenience of my Kindle - for travel and for procuring a book in seconds.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Book
Convenience
Hands
Nonfiction
Seconds
Smell
Pencil
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Since the middle of the twentieth century, our understanding of the American past has been revolutionized, in no small part because of our altered conceptions of the place of race in the nation's history.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
History
Altered
Middle
Race
Twentieth Century
Understanding
Since
Nation
Small
Place
Revolutionized
Small Part
Twentieth
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Probably half the cases of Civil War dead were not identified. And so there was no way to let loved ones know, and there were no regularized processes in either Northern or Southern Army for notifying next of kin.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Army
Cases
Civil War
Loved Ones
Civil
Identified
Northern
Processes
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I'd say Harvard graduates leave here with a sense of the possible and the limit - and a sense that there are no limits to what humans can do and that you can always be pushing, whatever limit you think might be there.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Graduates
Harvard
Humans
Pushing
Limit
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Death created the modern American union, not just by ensuring national survival, but by shaping enduring national structures and commitments. The work of death was Civil War America's most fundamental and most demanding undertaking.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Death
War
America
Civil War
Survival
Civil
Commitments
Demanding
Enduring
Ensuring
Fundamental
National
Union
Shaping
Structures
Undertaking
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I think the expectation of me was that I'd grow up, get married, have a family, probably not even have a job outside the home. I had bold notions sometime in my childhood that I wanted to be veterinarian... I wasn't sure I'd ever do it.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Veterinarian
Bold
Expectation
Get Married
Grow Up
Notions
Sometime
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A university is not about results in the next quarter; it is not even about who a student has become by graduation. It is about learning that molds a lifetime, learning that transmits the heritage of millennia; learning that shapes the future
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Heritage
Mold
Shapes
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Of all living things, only humans consciously anticipate death; the consequent need to choose how to behave in its face - to worry about how to die - distinguishes us from other animals. The need to manage death is the particular lot of humanity.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Anticipate
Behave
Humans
Manage
Consequent
Distinguishes
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When I was growing up in Virginia, the Civil War was presented to me as glorious with dramatic courage and military honor. Later, I realized how death was central to the reality. It was at the core of women's lives. It's what they talked about most.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Civil War
Dramatic
Glorious
Honor
Virginia
Central
Civil
Presented
Talked
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The ability to recognize opportunities and move in new - and sometimes unexpected - directions will benefit you no matter your interests or aspirations. A liberal arts education is designed to equip students for just such flexibility and imagination.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Education
Imagination
Ability
Flexibility
Liberal Arts
Matter
Students
Unexpected
Arts
Arts Education
Aspirations
Benefit
Designed
Directions
Equip
Interests
Liberal
Move
Opportunities
Recognize
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Americans in the Civil War period were very interested in Heaven and what it might be like, because they were having to face the fact that many of their loved ones were gone and many of their loved ones, they hoped, were in this other realm called Heaven.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Civil War
Heaven
Loved Ones
Civil
Hoped
Realm
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The seductiveness of war derives in part from its location on this boundary of the human, the inhuman, and the superhuman. It requires us to confront the relationship among the noble, the horrible, and the infinite; the animal, the spiritual, and the divine.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Animal
Divine
Horrible
Infinite
Inhuman
Location
Noble
Superhuman
Boundary
Confront
Derives
Requires
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I think that the firepower of the Civil War, the numbers of bodies that were left to rot, the numbers of amputations in the Civil War, all of this created threats to the understanding of the human being as an integral soul, as a body and soul that could be united.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Civil War
Numbers
Bodies
Civil
Integral
Rot
Threats
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I lived in a world where social arrangements were taken for granted and assumed to be timeless. A child's obligation was to learn these usages, not to question them. The complexities of racial deportment were of a piece with learning manners and etiquette more generally.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Arrangements
Etiquette
Granted
Manners
Obligation
Taken For Granted
Timeless
Assumed
Complexities
Generally
Piece
Racial
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High school students ought to seek out campus communities where they feel not only empowered to engage their talents, but also challenged to leave their comfort zones. The ability to embrace new opportunities emerges, in part, from a willingness to take risks and to fail.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Campus
Comfort
Embrace
High School Students
Ought
Willingness
Zone
Challenged
Communities
Talents
Engage
Fail
Seek
New Opportunities
Opportunities
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Albert Camus's 'La Peste' - 'The Plague' - had an enormous impact on me when I read it in high school French class, and I chose my senior yearbook quote from it. In college, I wrote a philosophy class paper on Camus and Sartre, and again chose my yearbook quote from 'La Peste.'
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Yearbook
Enormous
Paper
Plague
Senior
Albert
Chose
French
La
Quote
Sartre
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I think the most important leadership lessons I've learned have to do with understanding the context in which you are leading. Universities are places with enormously distributed authority and many different sorts of constituencies, all of whom have a stake in that institution.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Authority
Lessons
Context
Distributed
Institution
Universities
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I've always done more than I ever thought I would. Becoming a professor - I never would have imagined that. Writing books - I never would have imagined that. Getting a Ph.D. - I'm not sure I would even have imagined that. I've lived my life a step at a time. Things sort of happened.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Life Time Step
Professor
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When I address admitted students each spring, I ask them to consider two questions: Why would Harvard be the right place for the person I am? Why would it be the right place for the person that I want to become? These questions, in my mind, get at the heart of any admissions process.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Admission
Harvard
Spring
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I never planned my career. I never planned to be president of Harvard. People would have thought I was crazy, probably, at the age of 8 or 10 or 20, if I had said that. So what I would say to people planning their careers is to be ready to improvise. Be ready to follow up on opportunities as they unfold.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Careers
Harvard
Planning
Ready
Follow
Improvise
Opportunities
Planned
Unfold
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Before the Civil War, there were no national cemeteries, no processes for identifying the dead in the battle. There weren't any dog tags, and there was no next-of-kin notification. You didn't necessarily even hear what the fate of your loved ones had been. It was up to their comrades to write and inform you.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Battle
Civil War
Fate
Identifying
Loved Ones
Cemeteries
Civil
Comrades
Inform
Processes
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In the middle of the nineteenth century, the United States embarked on a new relationship with death, entering into a civil war that proved bloodier than any other conflict in American history, a war that would presage the slaughter of World War I's Western Front and the global carnage of the twentieth century.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
American History
Carnage
Civil War
Conflict
Entering
Nineteenth Century
Slaughter
Twentieth Century
Western
Civil
Embarked
Nineteenth
Proved
Twentieth
World War
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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.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Effort
Entwined
Human Beings
Nations
Began
Beings
Centuries
Define
Drawn
Humanities
Remained
Small Part
Sought
Subject
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I think that issues of gender have been discussed widely at Harvard. But I think I was chosen clearly on the merits, and I wish to operate as president on the merits. I think, on one level, we might say that I can affirm that women have the aptitude to do science or to do anything, including being president of Harvard.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Aptitude
Chosen
Harvard
Affirm
Discussed
Merits
Operate
Widely
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We have been telling and hearing and reading war stories for millennia. Their endurance may lie in their impossibility; they can never be complete, for the tensions and the contradictions within them will never be eliminated or resolved. That challenge is essential to their power and their attraction. War stories matter.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Attraction
Endurance
Hearing
Impossibility
Contradictions
Eliminated
Essential
Millennia
Resolved
Tensions
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As a kid, I was growing up in an era of celebration of the Civil War centennial, with a lot of 'Lost Cause' emphasis on the Confederacy. I used to play Civil War soldiers with my brothers as a child, and my older brother always insisted that he got to be Lee, and I got be Grant. I never knew that Grant won until quite some time had passed.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Celebration
Civil War
Emphasis
Older Brother
Time War Always
Brothers
Civil
Confederacy
Grant
Insisted
Lee
Passed
Quite Some Time
Soldiers
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As a scholar, you don't want to repeat yourself, ever. You're supposed to say it once, publish it, and then it's published, and you don't say it again. If someone comes and gives a scholarly paper about something they've already published, that's just terrible. As a university president, you have to say the same thing over and over and over.
Drew Gilpin Faust / Historian
Paper
Scholar
Published
Repeat
Same Thing
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