21 Quotes by William Scott

The British system had requirements, including Latin. I'm not positive you ever had to know Greek, but there are certainly kinds of curricula where you had to know Greek too. I think in Britain there was the most mindless, repetitive sort of learning.

The one thing you've got to say about Columbia is that it has courses that are famous. It has alumni who come back and say it was the best thing they ever did.

I no longer worry whether a painting is about something or not. I am only concerned with the expectation, from a flat surface, of an illusion.

On occasion I have drawn as a release from painting. The economy in using paper, pencil, charcoal and crayon can help towards a greater gamble and higher rewards. I also find that drawing can generate ideas more rapidly than painting.

There are certain authors that do not turn students on; it is the truth. Homer happens to be one of them.

You just don't want to push people into doing things that they really don't want to do. I don't think it's going to produce much.

When I was an undergraduate at Princeton, freshman year, first term, I ended up in the course on Plato's Republic. That book just captivated me - not because of the answers, and the answers can be somewhat unsatisfying, but because of the questions, the way you went at it, the methods, the kinds of questions you could ask, the different answers you could get. That's why I'm still fascinated by that book.

I think it is important for us as teachers to offer a huge spread of courses from Plato, the deadest white male around, to very modern philosophy.

I think it's amazing to see this action with a car that everybody's so familiar with, in the backwoods and on dirt roads and stuff.