What are liberal arts?

Famous quotes containing the words liberal and/or arts:

    The power of consumer goods ... has been engendered by the so-called liberal and progressive demands of freedom, and, by appropriating them, has emptied them of their meaning, and changed their nature.
    Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975)

    In a very ugly and sensible age, the arts borrow, not from life, but from each other.
    Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)