Welcome to the Humanities Initiative

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) “Train of Thought” Program

 Since Fall of 2009, the Humanities Initiative has assisted the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority with the “Train of Thought” program, a spin-off of the MTA’s “Poetry in Motion” project. This program presents intellectually stimulating selections from great works of literature, philosophy, science and history to millions of New Yorkers through the posting of quotations on the city’s subways. The Initiative compiles short quotations, which besides appearing on posters in over 2,000 subway cars and 4,000 buses, will also appear on the backs of 18 million MetroCards.

Recent Humanities Initiative Contributions to “Train of Thought”
Stephen W. Hawking:  "The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired."

Nicholas Black Elk, on the Battle at Wounded Knee:  "Now that I can see it all as from a lonely hilltop, I know it was the story of a mighty vision given to a man too weak to use it; of a holy tree that should have flourished in a people's heart with flowers and singing birds, and now is withered; and of a people's dream that died in bloody snow."

John Muir:  "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."

Walt Whitman, 1866:  "Future years will never know the seething hell and the black infernal background, the countless minor scenes and interiors of the secession war, and it is best they should not. The real war will never get in the books."

 Mihri Khatun, 15^th-century female Turkish poet:
"My heart burns in flames of sorrow
Sparks and smoke rise turning to the sky
Within me, the heart has taken fire like a candle
My body, whirling, is a lighthouse illuminated by your image"

Another five quotations in the areas of history and science will be appearing in the summer. Keep an eye out for our logo!