The now-legendary motto "I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study" first appeared on the university's Great Seal. (Almost 150 years later, in August 2007, the motto was named the top university slogan by Motto magazine.) Andrew D. White, Cornell's first president, polished the founder's words to create the memorable phrase. According to George S. Batchellor, a friend of White's, "His pen traced the present motto as the language of Ezra Cornell." And historian Carl Becker noted that Cornell had unwittingly paraphrased Dr. Samuel Johnson, who told Boswell, "I would have the world to be thus told, 'Here is a school where everything may be learnt.'"

-- Adapted by George Lowery from Morris Bishop's "A History of Cornell."