" They are also called liberal because their aim to free us. 

It's as if knowledge contains within itself the power

 to give us some form of freedom, to free us from 

various sorts of tyranny; "

from reading dante (text version of the free 

Yale Open Course on Dante' s Comedy)

by Giuseppe Mazzotta, this quote is on 

the difference between the liberal and 
mechanical arts, "an old medieval 
distinction."

I think in this trying time, when rationality and decency seem
largely absent, that I need to turn my back on the certainties 

of the past, engage less in the present (especially the news) 
and quietly reexamine what I want to do for myself, my family
and what I want to contribute to the world. I see this as part exile

and part journey of discovery, to identify some new mental or 
emotional tools that can bring me a new, stronger sense of 
equilibrium that I can use to deal with a changing world.

I may have mentioned before that I have spent many years
studying the lives and works to two very contradictory individuals

 Charles Darwin and Dante Alighieri, in my mind Darwin personifies 
scientific inquiry and Dante the results of government and faith 
questioned. Both questioned what they saw, spoke truth to power
and both left works of great beauty and power. As Dante himself 
may have melodramatically phrased it , They shall be my Virgil.

"I hear new news every day, and those ordinary rumours 

of war, plagues, fires, inundations, thefts, murders, massacres, 

meteors, comets, spectrums, prodigies, apparitions, of towns 

taken, cities besieged in France, Germany, Turkey, Persia, 

Poland, &c., daily musters and preparations, and such like; 

which these tempestuous times afford, battles fought, so many 

men slain, monomachies, shipwrecks, piracies, and sea-fights; 

peace, leagues, stratagems, and fresh alarums. A vast confusion 

of vows, wishes, actions, edicts, petitions, lawsuits, pleas, laws, 

proclamations, complaints, grievances, are daily brought to our 

ears. New books every day, pamphlets, currantoes, stories, whole 

catalogues of volumes of all sorts, new paradoxes, opinions, 

schisms, heresies, controversies in philosophy, religion, &c. Now 

come tidings of weddings, maskings, mummeries, entertainments, 

jubilees, embassies, tilts and tournaments, trophies, triumphs, revels, 

sports, plays ; then again, as in a new shifted scene, treasons, 

cheating tricks, robberies, enormous villainies in all kinds, funerals, 

burials, deaths of princes, new discoveries, expeditions, now comical, 

then tragical matters. Today we hear of new lords and officers created, 

to-morrow of some great men deposed, and then again of fresh honours 

conferred; one is let loose, another imprisoned; one purchaseth, another 

breaketh; he thrives, his neighbour turns bankrupt; now plenty, then 

again dearth and famine; one runs, another rides, wrangles, laughs, 

weeps, &c. Thus I daily hear, and such like, both private and public 

news, amidst the gallantry and misery of the world"

from Anatomy of Melancholy 

by Robert Burton