Academic Quotes

Life is a series of lessons, some of them obvious, some of them not. We learn as we go that dreams end, that plans get changed, that promises get broken, that our idols disappoint us.

Joan Chittister

The more important question, of course, was what the new Lucy would do, and even though I was pretty sure the old Lucy wouldn't be around much anymore, I was a little bit afraid the new Lucy hadn't yet shown up.

Cultural elites in countries that dominate peoples have adapted subject people's religion for their own purposes.

Richard A. Horsley

I shouldn't be naive Diana said. Of course, realising its destructive power only makes them want it more. Of course. Even more than great wealth, power craves technologies of destruction. Good to be wealthy, but better to remain in power—and the more awe-inspiring the weaponry at your disposal, the better able you are to do that.

If a man speaks his mind in a forest, and no woman hears him, is he still wrong?

Commercials are not the only junk food in the speech market - indeed, when compared to shallow news reporting, vacuous television shows, or political doublespeak, commercials are not even the most harmful to mental health.

Rodney A. Smolla

True creativity is impossible without some measure of passion.

The severe restrictions which Wundt placed on introspection also manifest themselves in the types of judgment that his experimental subjects were required to make. In accordance with the precept that internal perception can only become observation insofar as it is linked to controllable external stimuli, the introspective reports from his laboratory are very largely limited to judgments of size, intensity, and duration of physical stimuli, supplemented at times by judgments of their simultaneity and succession.

If literature survives at all, it is as retreat for those who refuse to assimilate to American mass culture.

You will remember some of what you hear; much of what you read; more of what you see, and almost all of what you experience and understand fully.

Administration is the process and agency which is responsible for the determination of the aims for which an organization and its management are to strive, which establishes the broad policies under which they are to operate and which gives general oversight to the continuing effectiveness of the total operation in reaching the objectives sought.

The pleasure of their [the Imagists'] poetry is not the satisfaction of discovering little by little, but of seizing at a single blow, in the fullest vitality, the image, a fusion of reality in words.

Information establishes a relation between things and agents.

Society just doesn't care about young people anymore, even if we are the future.

The problem is not that of the sickness of an acquisitive society; it is that of the acquisitiveness of a sick society.

People who rarely read long books, or even short stories, still appreciate the greatest examples of the shortest literary genres. I have long been fascinated by these short genres. They seem to lie just where my heart is, somewhere between literature and philosophy.

Gary Saul Morson

Legal concepts are supernatural entities which do not have a verifiable existence except to the eyes of faith.

In undertaking the conquest of self it is of the utmost importance to form strong bonds of habit between ideas and conduct.

To discover one's own spiritual poverty is to achieve a positive conquest by the spirit.

William Barrett

So at bottom Foucault's enterprise seems stuck on the horns of a huge epistemological dilemma: if it tells the truth, then all knowledge is suspect in its pretense of objectivity; but in that case, how can the theory itself vouch for its truth? It's like the famous paradox about the Cretean Liar—and Foucault seemed quite unable to get out of it (which explains why he didn't even try to face it).

José Guilherme Merquior

Adam was created from a handful taken from the whole earth. Thus, his sons carried exactly the nature of the colors of the earth. Some were red, others white and some were black. Some were good-natured, others ill-natured while some were vicious and some virtuous.

Ahmad Baba al Massufi

I've never known fear; as a youth I fought/ In endless battles. I am old, now,/ But I will fight again, seek fame still,/ If the dragon hiding in his tower dares/ To face me

But what if your fire is not burning well or, worse, has gone out? Without inner fire, you have no light, no heat, no desire... there's only one way out - and that's through the dark woods. You must change your life.

Losing faith in your own singularity is the start of wisdom, I suppose; also the first announcement of death.

Peter Conrad (academic)

The medical investigator must often fish in troubled waters; and sometimes he cannot find again the promising fishing ground he has once visited, because unexpected fog prevents him from seeing the intersecting bearings of his desired ground.

Charles William Eliot