The excerpts will be selected by Columbia University's Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, and will cover history, philosophy, literature and science.
The first selections will be from "Charlotte's Web" author E.B. White on the special character of New Yorkers and Galileo on the centrality of mathematics to science.
Two new quotations will be selected every three months.
The MTA already features "Poetry in Motion," a series of short poetry extracts.
The agency said it sees the series as a way to entice riders "to explore the author or subject further."
