1001Philosophers

Charles Mills Quotes on Knowledge

Charles W. Mills (1951–2021), the Jamaican-American political philosopher whose The Racial Contract (1997) gave Anglophone analytic political philosophy one of its most influential late-twentieth-century critiques, developed across his career a sustained analysis of "white ignorance" as a structural rather than merely individual epistemic phenomenon. Black Rights/White Wrongs (2017) and the essays collected as Blackness Visible (1998) press the case that the social epistemology of modern racially structured societies systematically produces and sustains a substantive ignorance about the racial order on the part of those whom it benefits, and that this structurally generated ignorance is itself a proper object of philosophical analysis.

Quotes

  • “A university teaches. What does it teach? It must obviously teach all the languages in which the great literatures which have been preserved were written — Hebrew , Arabic , Sanskrit , Greek , Latin , French , Italian , German , Scandinavian , and English .”

    Z. Elmarsafy; A. Bernard; D. Attwell (13 June 2013). Debating Orientalism . Springer. p. 82. ISBN 978-1-137-34111-2 .
  • “Enter to grow in wisdom. / Depart to serve better thy country and thy kind.”

    Over entrance (“Enter”) and exit (“Depart”) of Dexter gate (gift of Class of 1890) to Harvard Yard, erected 1901. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] | Alternatives Eliot considered included “Enter daily to grow in wisdom,” and “Depart to serve better thy country and mankind .” [ 3 ] [ 4 ] | Widely paraphrased as: Enter to learn; go forth to serve. | Used by schools including Brigham Young University, Delaware State Univ
  • “Over entrance (“Enter”) and exit (“Depart”) of Dexter gate (gift of Class of 1890) to Harvard Yard, erected 1901. [ 1 ] [ 2 ]”

    Enter to grow in wisdom. / Depart to serve better thy country and thy kind.
  • “Alternatives Eliot considered included “Enter daily to grow in wisdom,” and “Depart to serve better thy country and mankind .” [ 3 ] [ 4 ]”

    Enter to grow in wisdom. / Depart to serve better thy country and thy kind.
  • “Widely paraphrased as: Enter to learn; go forth to serve.”

    Enter to grow in wisdom. / Depart to serve better thy country and thy kind.
  • “Sometimes credited (in abbreviated form) to Margaret Sanger . [ 6 ]”

    Enter to grow in wisdom. / Depart to serve better thy country and thy kind.
  • “Sometimes parodied as: “Enter to learn; go forth to earn.” [ 5 ]”

    Enter to grow in wisdom. / Depart to serve better thy country and thy kind.

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