Quotes About Scholars

Without falling into sociopolitical reductionism, it remains necessary to protest against the prevailing tendency, among Western scholars, to read the works of Nishida [Kitar?] and the Kyoto school as expressions of a "pure philosophy" stemming from a "pure experience.

Bad philosophers may have a certain influence; good philosophers, never

For many years, biographers and scholars, beginning with her great nephew James Austen-Leigh, presented her as a quiet, reserved, proper woman, but one has only to read her novels to realize that she was nothing so bland. Her genius, her craft, and her timeless prose are no secret, but thanks to Cassandra's scissors, most other aspects of her life will probably remain a mystery.

It is my obligation as a gentleman to protect philosophers.

Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.

Embi: And you're supposed to be so good at mending primuses, pastor Jón! Pastor Jón: And correspondingly bad at Baroque art. Embi: How do you know there are 133 pieces? Who has had time to dismantle this work of art so carefully? Or to count the bits? Pastor Jón: No one is so busy that he hasn't the time to dismantle a work of art. Then scholars wake up and count the pieces.

The learned are not agreed as to the time when the Gospel of John was written some dating it as early as the year 68, others as late as the year 98 but it is generally conceded to have been written after all the others.

Literary intellectuals at one pole—at the other scientists…. Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension.

It, one suspects, must have had much to do with the evocation of what is called the Oxford spirit—that gentlest spirit, so lingering and searching, so dear to them who as youths were brought into ken of it, so exasperating to them who were not. Yes, certainly, it is this mild, miasmal air, not less than the grey beauty and gravity of the buildings, that has helped Oxford to produce, and foster eternally, her peculiar race of artist-scholars, scholar-artists. The

Altogether, the American Rhodes Scholars, with their splendid native gift of oratory, and their modest desire to please, and their not less evident feeling that they ought merely to edify, and their constant delight in all that of Oxford their English brethren don't notice, and their constant fear that they are being corrupted, are a noble, rather than a comfortable, element in the social life of the University.

Throughout American history, the racial imperialism of whites has supported the custom of scholars using the term "women" even if they are referring solely to the experience of white women.

Il y a deux sortes de savants : les spécialistes, qui connaissent tout sur rien, et les philosophes, qui ne connaissent rien sur tout.

I think something quite dreadful has been happening to criticism in the arts, particularly in America, during the last twenty years. In an age which is so much dominated by technological advance, the methods and even the jargon of science and engineering have mistakenly been adopted not only by fringe disciplines like psychology and social studies but by many arts scholars who should have known better. from In Defense of the Artist in Signposts to Criticism of Children's Literature (1983)

Narcissism, justly lamented for doing so much damage, especially within the family unit, could also work miracles, as when a fundamentally apathetic collection of illiterates gets wind that they appear as characters in a book and transforms overnight into a bunch of rabbinical scholars.

Not only are magical texts among the oldest surviving pieces of literature, but many scholars and anthropologists suggest that it was the need to record spells and divination results that stimulated the very birth of writing.

Scientists and scholars should constitute themselves as an international NGO of exceptional authority.

History has taught us time and again that political power always raises its angry fist when timeless principles are lost. We know that without the scale of self-evident truths grounded in the laws of nature and nature's God, every culture eventually finds itself subject to the rule of the gang or the tyranny of the individual. Recognizing this, scholars of all ages have confidently given their hearts and minds to the words, You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.

Science is history arranged according to the superstition and taste of the moment. The vocabulary of scholars has no wit, no salt. These heavy tomes have no soul, they are filled with distress...

"The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob," not of philosophers and scholars.

Some scholars in recent years have expressed a certain wonderment that "religion is back"; the wonder is rather that it was thought ever to have departed, apart from the "scholarly wish fulfillment" or projections of those who accepted classic theories of modernization and secularization.30

Biblical scholars, for example, are almost solely devoted to maintaining the cultural significance of the Bible not because any knowledge it provides is relevant to our world but because of the self-serving drive to protect the power position of the biblical studies profession.

Many scholars forget, it seems to me, that our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding.

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

It's such a shame, really, because we were known for our country of saints and scholars, and we grew up with such a great tradition with St. Patrick, and he is the one who brought Christianity to Ireland, and we celebrate St. Patrick's day every single year, but there's very few practising Catholics or practising Christians.