Academia Quotes

“Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget this, and out American colleges will recede in their public importance whilst they grow richer every year.”

“The Good Spirit never cared for the colleges, and though all men and boys were now drilled in Greek, Latin, and Mathematics, it had quite left these shells high on the beach, and was creating and feeding other matters [science] at other ends of the world.”

“We need laws written by people who have confronted life in the real world, not in the sheltered world of trust fund recipients of the insulated cocoon of academia.”

“Ideological bigotry has become the norm on even our most prestigious campuses, where students can go for years without reading or hearing anything that challenges the left vision.”

“Oh these mathematicians make me tired! When you ask them to work out a sum they take a piece of paper, cover it with rows of A's, B's, and X's and Y's ... scatter a mess of flyspecks over them, and then give you an answer that's all wrong!”

“It may be expecting too much to expect most intellectuals to have common sense, when their whole life is based on their being uncommon -- that is, saying things that are different from what everyone else is saying. There is only so much genuine originality in anyone. After that, being uncommon means indulging in pointless eccentricities or clever attempts to mock or shock.”

“The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.”

“Just what is it that academics have to fear if they stand up for common decency, instead of letting campus barbarians run amok?”

“Some full professors could more accurately be described as empty professors.”

“Too often what are called "educated" people are simply people who have been sheltered from reality for years in ivy-covered buildings. Those whose whole careers have been spent in ivy-covered buildings, insulated by tenure, can remain adolescents on into their golden retirement years.”

“Varnishing is the only artistic process with which Royal Academicians are thoroughly familiar.”

“The presence of irony does not necessarily mean that the earnestness is excluded. Only assistant professors assume that.”

“Poetry cannot breathe in the scholar's atmosphere.”

“The learned are seldom pretty fellows, and in many cases their appearance tends to discourage a love of study in the young.”

“A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas.”

“The university president who cashiered every professor unwilling to support Woodrow Wilson for the first vacancy in theTrinity. . . .”