20th-century Academic Quotes

Lawrence Lessig
Harold Laski
Samantha Power
Terry Eagleton
Donald Norman
Lionel Trilling
Fredric Jameson

What Confucius tells us to focus on first is not how to bring stability to the world, but how to be the best possible version of ourselves. To "cultivate one's moral character" is the first step towards taking responsibility for the nation, and for society. Confucius and his disciples struggled hard to be "the best version" of themselves, but their aim in this was to better carry out their responsibilities to the society in which they lived.

A creative moment is part of a longer creative process which, in turn, is part of a creative life.

Tom Wujec
Tom Wujec
Civic engagement means working to make a difference in the civic life of our communities and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values and motivation to make that difference. It means promoting the quality of life in a community, through both political and non-political processes.

Where once a tyrant had to wish that his subjects had but one common neck that he might strangle them all at once, all he has to do now is to 'educate the people' so that they will have but one common mind to delude.

The power to regulate the value of money does not involve a power to dilute the value of money by inflation, an absurd and self-serving rendering.

Thomas Woods
Thomas Woods
It is difficult to be humble. Even if you aim at humility, there is no guarantee that when you have attained the state you will not be proud of the feat.

Colleges and universities, for all the benefits they bring, accomplish far less for their students than they should. Many students graduate without being able to write well enough to satisfy their employers... reason clearly or perform competently in analyzing complex, non-technical problems.

I would give almost anything I have to reverse the course of my life in the last three years.... I have deceived my friends, and I had millions of them.

Charles Van Doren
Charles Van Doren
The human body comes in only two shapes and three colors. I don't expect there will be any changes, so what we learn about it now will serve us for a long time to come. The Fastest Man on Earth

A stage set should not make a pretty picture of its own. The empty stage should look formal and pleasing, but should seem to be waiting for the action to complete it; it should not hold definite significance in itself.

Spirituality for me is the sum total of all the acts of my day.

Some problems are just too complicated for rational, logical solutions. They admit of insights, not answers.

Jerome Wiesner
Jerome Wiesner
Bureaucratic solutions to problems of practice will always fail because effective teaching is not routine, students are not passive, and questions of practice are not simple, predictable, or standardized. Consequently, instructional decisions cannot be formulated on high then packaged and handed down to teachers.

One of the things wrong with the popular, classical definition of the scientific method is the implication that solitary people can successfully do good science, for example frame hypotheses and test them. In practice, however, the people who put forward the hypotheses are not usually the same people who apply the best test to them.

Television's overpowering images of Black deviance — its regularity and frequency — are impossible to ignore. These negative images have been seared into our collective consciousness. It is no surprise that most Americans wrongly believe that Blacks are responsible for the majority of crime.

Held in the palms of thousands of disgruntled people over the centuries have been ideas worth millions - if they only had taken the first step and then followed through.

Robert M. Hayes
Robert M. Hayes
When I was against McCarthy and I was out in Wisconsin fighting against his election, and when I was calling in the police at Harvard, I was fighting for the same principles.

The human being is not a fallen being in need of redemption but rather a forgetful being who must be reminded of God and his own nature.

Joseph E. B. Lumbard
Joseph E. B. Lumbard
What did you know about Uzbekistan once you learned that Old Uzbek had a hundred different words for crying?

That is where homeland is. In that shifting space, kinfolk know one another by secret signs; and wherever kinfolk meet, homeland soil coalesces about their feet in the mysterious way that coral cays, like seabirds pausing in flight, anchor themselves to the Barrier Reef.

It is in the fusion of autochthonous Jews with semi-Jewish Khazars and Kabars in the tenth century that we must seek the earliest demographic basis of the Jewish population of medieval Hungary.

Vulgar libertarian apologists for capitalism use the term "free market" in an equivocal sense: they seem to have trouble remembering, from one moment to the next, whether they're defending actually existing capitalism or free market principles.... When prodded, they'll grudgingly admit that the present system is not a free market, and that it includes a lot of state intervention on behalf of the rich. But as soon as they think they can get away with it, they go right back to defending the wealth of existing corporations.

It's hard to know how to deal with liberalization in cultures that have been repressed for a long time, that don't have strong civil societies. But for the United States, of all countries, to be talking about human rights just rings very, very hollow in light of all the objections to our policy in Israel — the perception that we're hard on one side and not on the other, and that we don't contest the settlements or human-rights abuses committed by Israeli soldiers, and so on. Plus the fact that we have turned our back on international treaties and not been a global citizen, I think, makes people, even democrats, the leading lights in these repressed societies, very squeamish about being associated with the United States.

Samantha Power
Samantha Power
The true leader serves. Serves people. Serves their best interests, and in doing so will not always be popular, may not always impress. But because true leaders are motivated by loving concern than a desire for personal glory, they are willing to pay the price.

The plants we've chosen will collect and cycle Earth's minerals, water, and air; shade the soil and renew it with leafy mulch; and yield fruits and greens for people and wildlife.