“Education doesn’t make you happy. Nor does freedom. We don’t become happy just because we’re free – if we are. Or because we’ve been educated – if we have. But because education may be the means by which we realize we are happy. It opens our eyes, our ears, tells us where delights are lurking, convinces us that there is only one freedom of any importance whatsoever, that of the mind, and gives us the assurance – the confidence – to walk the path our mind, our educated mind, offers.”

Irish and British novelist and philosopher

Dame Jean Iris Murdoch was an Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Born in 1919 and active in the twentieth century, she is known for fiction that explored moral choice, desire, good and evil, and the hidden workings of the mind. Her first novel, Under the Net, appeared in 1954 and was later named by Modern Library among the best English-language novels of the century. The Sea, The Sea won the Booker Prize in 1978. She was made a Dame in 1987 for services to literature, and her work was later placed high on lists of major British writers.