David Myers Quotes

8 Sourced Quotes

Excellence is sometimes confused with idealism, leading to an 'ivory tower' attitude and a spirit of isolation from one's surroundings. I must emphasise in the strongest terms that the university is a creation of the community; it is paid for by the community and it serves the community. Its purpose is to educate the young men and women who will live in the community.

David Myers
A university is a place for the free interchange of ideas. It is not only a traditional privilege of university people to dissect, examine and criticise the basis of current practices; it is an obligation to do so, provided only that their criticism is supported by and scholarly reasoning. This implies a freedom which must be jealously guarded and never abused. We live in a democratic community in which there is no place for the suppression of reasoned criticism. Universities have no monopoly of the right to criticise; nevertheless, they are centres of concentration of intellectual ideas, and it is not surprising that many decisions at government level have been suggested or stimulated through an expression of an academic viewpoint.

David Myers
I would not like you to deduce from my remarks that I am thinking solely, or even mainly of academic excellence. Students come to a university to learn, but also to live. A good education results more from the absorption of an environment than from formal teaching. The university provides opportunities for stimulating curiosity and criticism.

David Myers
Let me turn now to our fundamental aims. Of the many views that have been expressed on this subject, there is one in particular which is universally accepted in principle, if not always in practice. It is that a university should aim at the pursuit of excellence in every one of its varied activities... however unobtainable the objective, it must be sought relentlessly and without compromise.

David Myers
There is no place in a university for hiding things under a carpet. Curiosity and the desire to question are habits of mind and, while they can be encouraged in lectures and seminars, they will develop fully only in the wider environment of discussion, criticism and the defence of ideals.

David Myers
Our main task in the years to come is that of self-criticism and correction. Those of us who are concerned with the administration of the university may be expected, by the very nature of our duties, to react adversely to change. It is part of out responsibility to maintain some kind of order among the ferment of ideas which occurs in any worthwhile university. But order must never be allowed to interfere with or obstruct the states of disorder which lead to the development of academic ideas.

David Myers
Although in the long term the strength of a university lies in its members rather than its buildings, nevertheless its scholarly aims can be more readily achieved if its buildings and physical facilities are designed in harmony with its plan of academic development.

David Myers
There is an objective reality out there, but we view it through the spectacles of our beliefs, attitudes, and values.

David Myers