211 Quotes About Academia

...you sometimes note an impatience on the part of a specialist that the public does not show sufficient interest in his assemblage of information as such. He is likely to conclude that the average person is somewhat stupid. The opposite is true. It is a sign of native intelligence on the part of any person not to clutter his mind with indigestibles.

The role of the academy as a colonial and imperial space par excellence, which in the age globalization and corporatization of practically everything, has become the biggest enemy of knowledge and the decolonial option. In fact, the academy has become a space that instead of creating options, is doing everything in its power to deny most people options and keep itself as the only game in town.

In all professional endeavors, rigorous standards of accuracy are required. Scholars cherish their freedom of expression. But full freedom cannot be experienced if part of one’s knowledge is ruled “out-of-bounds” by edicts of men. Spiritual truth cannot be ignored—especially divine commandments.

He plunged at once into the somewhat rodent-like life of a professional historian.

I love the escape. Academics aren’t supposed to say that, but it’s true. I love to dig into somebody else’s vision, nightmare, utopia, whatever. I love how books put a dent in our egos— turns out we’re not the first sentient generation on the planet after all. Other people have been just as perspective, just as worked up, about the same damn human problems we face.

Let us guard against stripping our science of its share of poetry.

It is not the quantity of publications, but their quality and the effects they have on the real world outside of academia’s ivory tower is what determines whether we shall live way after we exit this world, or perish while still at 30!

On my first day in London I made an early start. Reaching the Public Record Office not much after ten, I soon secured the papers I needed for my research and settled in my place. I became, as is the way of the scholar, so deeply absorbed as to lose all consciousness of my surroundings or of the passage of time. When at last I came to myself, it was almost eleven and I was quite exhausted: I knew I could not prudently continue without refreshment.

Being paid to wonder seems like a heavy responsibility at times.