A real reader creates her own canon, for it consists precisely of those books that she has used to create herself.
~ William Deresiewicz

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It’s not okay to study history, because what good does that really do anyone, but it is okay to work for a hedge fund. It’s selfish to pursue your passion, unless it’s also going to make you a lot of money, in which case it isn’t selfish at all.
~ William Deresiewicz

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You’re told that you’re supposed to go to college, but you’re also told that you are being self-indulgent if you actually want to get an education. As opposed to what? Going into consulting isn’t self-indulgent? Going into finance isn’t self-indulgent?
~ William Deresiewicz

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Life is more than a job; jobs are more than a paycheck; and a country is more than its wealth.
~ William Deresiewicz

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You won’t be able to recognize the things you really care about until you have released your grip on all the things that you’ve been taught to care about.
~ William Deresiewicz

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There is something that’s a great deal more important than parental approval: learning to do without it. That’s what it means to become an adult.
~ William Deresiewicz

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When policy makers talk about higher education, from the president all the way down, they talk exclusively in terms of math and science. Journalists and pundits—some of whom were humanities majors and none of whom are nurses or engineers—never tire of lecturing the young about the necessity of thinking prudently when choosing a course of study, the naïveté of wanting to learn things just because you’re curious about them.
~ William Deresiewicz

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We have a crisis of leadership in America because our overwhelming power and wealth, earned under earlier generations of leaders, made us complacent, and for too long we have been training leaders who only know how to keep the routine going. Who can answer questions, but don’t know how to ask them. Who can fulfill goals, but don’t know how to set them. Who think about how to get things done, but not whether they’re worth doing in the first place.
~ William Deresiewicz

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Learning for its own sake means exactly what it says: learning is the only reason that you’re doing it, because learning is what matters.
~ William Deresiewicz

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