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Drew Gilpin Faust Quotes

Powerful Drew Gilpin Faust for Daily Growth

About Drew Gilpin Faust

Drew Gilpin Faust, born on October 18, 1947, in Goldsboro, North Carolina, is a distinguished American historian, academic administrator, and the Lincoln University Professor at Harvard University. Faust's interest in history was sparked during her childhood in the small town of Goldsboro, where she was surrounded by stories about the Civil War from her great-grandfather, a Union soldier, and her great-uncle, a Confederate officer who died on the battlefield. These personal accounts instilled in Faust a deep fascination with American history, particularly the Civil War era. She earned her Bachelor's degree from Bethany College in West Virginia and her Ph.D. in History from the University of Pennsylvania. Her doctoral dissertation, titled "Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War," was later published as her first book in 1996. Faust's influential works span various aspects of American history, with a particular focus on the Civil War and its aftermath. Her second book, "This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War" (2008), won the Pulitzer Prize for History. In 2017, she published "This Rich Land: America's Material Cultures," a reflection on material culture in American history. In 2007, Faust became the first female president of Harvard University, serving until 2018. Her tenure was marked by efforts to increase accessibility and affordability for students, as well as promoting diversity and inclusion at the institution. Faust's work is characterized by her deep empathy for the people she studies, a commitment to making history relevant to contemporary issues, and a dedication to fostering inclusive academic communities. Her contributions to American history and higher education continue to resonate widely.

Interpretations of Popular Quotes

"History teaches us that we must know our past in order to understand our present."

This quote suggests that understanding the past is essential for interpreting the present. By learning from history, we can gain insights into the factors that have shaped our current circumstances and make more informed decisions about the future. Knowledge of the past can help us avoid repeating mistakes, understand patterns, and adapt to changes effectively. In essence, history serves as a guide for navigating the complexities of the present and future.

"To forget the past is to condemn oneself to repeat it."

This quote emphasizes the importance of learning from history. By not acknowledging or remembering past mistakes, struggles, or triumphs, individuals or societies risk repeating them in the future. Understanding the lessons of our past helps us make informed decisions about our present and future actions, thereby breaking harmful cycles and fostering growth and progress.

"The most powerful resources are the human resources: knowledge, wisdom, and imagination."

This quote emphasizes that people's greatest assets lie in their intellect, experience, and creativity. Knowledge represents facts learned through education or life experiences, wisdom is the application of that knowledge to make informed decisions, and imagination is the ability to think beyond what currently exists and envision possibilities. By valuing these human resources, we acknowledge their crucial role in driving progress, innovation, and solving complex problems.

"The story of any university is the story of its people."

This quote emphasizes that a university's essence lies in its community - the individuals who constitute it, both past and present. The story of a university is not just about buildings or academic programs but rather about the lives, ideas, experiences, and achievements of its students, faculty, staff, and alumni. It underscores the importance of people as the driving force behind a university's success and growth, fostering an atmosphere that encourages intellectual exploration, innovation, and personal development.

"Our work as scholars and teachers is to ensure that the lessons of history inform our actions today, and that we strive to create a more just society tomorrow."

This quote by Drew Gilpin Faust emphasizes the importance of understanding history in shaping our present and future actions. As scholars and educators, we should use historical lessons to guide us towards fostering a more equitable and just society. Essentially, she is calling for an active role in utilizing knowledge from the past to influence positive change in the present and strive for social improvement in the future.

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

Students, Feel, Part, New Opportunities

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

Infinite, Part, Superhuman, Boundary

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

Love, Book, Read, Convenience

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

Small, Through, Subject, Entwined

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

Death, Die, Other, Anticipate

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

War, Universality, Offers, Attraction

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

Been, Telling, Impossibility, Attraction

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

I Think, Leading, Distributed

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

College, Had, Sartre, Chose

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

Education, Liberal Arts, Aspirations

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

Next, Southern, Loved Ones, Identified

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

University, Same Thing, Scholar

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

Death, Other, United, Twentieth

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

Cemeteries, Identifying, Comrades

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

Learning, Racial, Granted, Complexities

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

I Think, Sometime, Had, Get Married

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

Civil War, Commitments, Shaping

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

Excellence, Marketplace, International

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

Small, Middle, Been, Twentieth

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

United, I Think, Bodies, Rot

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

Think, Here, Always, Limits

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

Gender, Been, I Think, Aptitude

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

Play, Some, Confederacy, Grant

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

Thought, Career, Improvise, Harvard

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

Questions, Students, Why, Harvard

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

Process, Doing, Learned, Harvard

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

Death, Honor, About, Presented

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

Civil War, Been, Inhumanity, Produced

Mortality defines the human condition.

- Drew Gilpin Faust

Human Condition, Condition, Defines

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

Fact, Other, Very, Heaven

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