1862–1947 · President of Columbia University, 1902–1945 · Nobel Peace Prize 1931
Nicholas Murray Butler ran Columbia University for forty-three years, from 1902 to 1945 — the longest presidency in its history — and was one of the most quoted public men in America in the era between the wars. In 1931, the same year he delivered the Berkeley Charter Day address that produced this line, he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Jane Addams for his work behind the Kellogg–Briand Pact. He was a habitual maker of crisp, aphoristic distinctions in speeches, which is exactly how a sentence like this one escapes into the wild and starts collecting other people’s names.