Quotes About Academia

The quiet folks of America, who had played by all the rules and were now sweating in the frog pot, wanted someone who not only didn't care about speaking the King's English or living the rules of high society but openly mocked what the professional finger shakers from the media, academia, Hollywood, and politicians of both parties thought.

Old professors never die, they just lose their faculties.

College was for people who didn't know they were smart.

Schwitzgebel even scrounged up the missing-book lists from dozens of libraries and found that academic books on ethics, which are presumably borrowed mostly by ethicists, are more likely to be stolen or just never returned than books in other areas of philosophy.49 In other words, expertise in moral reasoning does not seem to improve moral behavior, and it might even make it worse (perhaps by making the rider more skilled at post hoc justification).

Schwitzgebel even scrounged up the missing-book lists from dozens of libraries and found that academic books on ethics, which are presumably borrowed mostly by ethicists, are more likely to be stolen or just never returned than books in other areas of philosophy.49 In other words, expertise in moral reasoning does not seem to improve moral behavior, and it might even make it worse

Scientists became "moral exhibitionists" in the lecture hall as they demonized fellow scientists and urged their students to evaluate ideas not for their truth but for their consistency with progressive ideals such as racial and gender equality.14

Research experts want to know what can be done about the values of poor segregated children; and this is a question that needs asking. But they do not ask what can be done about the values of the people who have segregated these communities. There is no academic study of the pathological detachment of the very rich...

Jews became the people whose heroes were teachers, whose citadels were schools, and whose passion was study and the life of the mind.

Some days, it feels unreasonable to expect that an academic text can work as a form of movement assessment or to support social and political change, including the redistribution of power. Perhaps nonfiction & the arts--literature, poetry & film--are potentially much better suited to the work of politically engaging audiences than the staid tools of the academy.

studying dead languages and

University of California at San Diego Professor Linda Brodkey argues that to teach both sides of the story is unnecessary—

Truth itself is a casualty as the result of a disturbing trend in academia to fully embrace postmodern moral relativism.

most professors—and not just those in the political and social science departments—don't even aspire to present a balanced perspective.

professors are ... intellectual terrorists. May they reap what they sow.

The people who occupy the professoriate have not had to work a real job – a job with real-world consequences -- in over 30 years.

A University should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning.

I consistently encounter people in academic settings and scientists and journalists who feel that you can't say that anyone is wrong in any deep sense about morality, or with regard to what they value in life. I think this doubt about the application of science and reason to questions of value is really quite dangerous.

I believe strongly that philosophy has nothing to do with specialists.

Medicine, academia, politics, social philosophy, capitalism, even religion all consistently miss the mark. If we base our lives on their precepts, we, too, will miss the mark of our highest calling. The greatest pursuit is not good health, unsurpassed wisdom, economic surplus, political freedom, or even faith that can move mountains. Unconditional, nonjudgmental loving. This is our aim, life's single highest and most rewarding pursuit.

In my experience, academia is a World War 1 kind of a domain, and I do my best to avoid all that trench warfare.

It's not hard to see how accusations against Trump as a racist and misogynist would be met with eye rolls and knowing murmurs of 'political correctness' by people who have had their worldview constantly caricatured and demonized by the cultural elites in academia, media and politics.

I'm worried about the future of America insofar as our academically most promising students are being funneled through the cookie-cutter Ivy League and other elite schools and emerging with this callow anti-American, anti-military cast to their thinking.

When I found out that I had won the MacArthur Fellowship, I had been a professor at Carnegie Mellon for a week. I probably shouldn't be saying this on TV, but I stopped worrying about tenure.

Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.