The ethical purpose of a liberal education is to liberate, which can only mean to make one capable of conceiving society as free, classless, and urbane. No such society exists, which is one reason why a liberal education must be deeply concerned with works of the imagination.
– Northrop Frye Anatomy of Criticism, p. 347 (Noted Dec. 10, 1990)
No society can plan for its own culture unless it restricts the output of culture to socially predictable standards.
– Frye, ibid., p. 347
Frye says Mill and Milton argue, in the Essay on Liberty and Aeropagitica respectively, that true intellectural liberty can only begin with an immediate and present guarantee on the autonomy of culture.
– Fry ibid., p. 348