Skip to main content

Daily Inspiration Quote by Derek Bok

"The oldest of the arts and the youngest of the professions"

About this Quote

A lawyer calling his own trade "the oldest of the arts and the youngest of the professions" is a neat piece of institutional shade dressed up as praise. Derek Bok, the long-serving Harvard president who came to academia through the law, knows exactly what he is doing: elevating law’s cultural pedigree while quietly questioning its moral maturity.

The line works because it splits the difference between craft and credential. "Art" implies improvisation, persuasion, performance - the human habit of arguing our way out of trouble is ancient, older than courts, older than written codes. Bok nods to that lineage: the lawyer as rhetorician, mediator, storyteller, someone who can arrange facts into a narrative that will move a room. It’s flattering, and it’s true enough to land.

Then comes the twist: "youngest of the professions". Profession here isn’t job; it’s a social contract - a group claiming specialized knowledge, self-regulation, and a duty beyond profit. Bok’s subtext is that law, despite its antiquity as practice, is still relatively new to the idea of professional ethics as a binding identity. Modern bar associations, standardized legal education, and licensing regimes are recent inventions, and the public still suspects lawyers of behaving like hired guns in a costume of civic virtue.

In the context of Bok’s career - navigating elite institutions, public trust, and the uneasy marriage of idealism and incentives - the sentence becomes a warning: law has always been skilled at winning arguments. The harder task, and the newer one, is earning legitimacy.

Quote Details

TopicTeaching
SourceHelp us find the source
Cite

Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Bok, Derek. (2026, January 15). The oldest of the arts and the youngest of the professions. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-oldest-of-the-arts-and-the-youngest-of-the-161981/

Chicago Style
Bok, Derek. "The oldest of the arts and the youngest of the professions." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-oldest-of-the-arts-and-the-youngest-of-the-161981/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The oldest of the arts and the youngest of the professions." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-oldest-of-the-arts-and-the-youngest-of-the-161981/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

More Quotes by Derek Add to List
Teaching: the oldest art, youngest profession
Click to enlarge Portrait | Landscape

About the Author

USA Flag

Derek Bok (born March 22, 1930) is a Lawyer from USA.

4 more quotes available

View Profile

Similar Quotes

Norman Rockwell, Artist