Academia Quotes

WHO IS LEARNED?
A definition

One who, consuming midnight oil
in studies diligent and slow,
teaches himself, with painful toil,
the things that other people know.

Professor Blobby doesn't see the fun
in what his fellow-man call relaxation.
He isn't ignorant of how it's done,
but lacks the necessary application.

To make a name for learning
when other roads are barred,
take something very easy
and make it very hard.

experts

If poetry is like an orgasm, an academic can be likened to someone who studies the passion-stains on the bedsheets.

poetry

Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love.

University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.

I don't think I've changed anyone's mind in 40 years. You basically don't change minds. Given that, I've turned to the strategy of corrupting the youth.

economists

Executive programs allow us to watch people who have never worked lecturing those who have never pondered.

The problem with academics is that they really think nonacademics find them more intelligent than themselves.

If you lost interest in a subject matter right after a final exam, you fooled the system and the system fooled you.

Academic careers have three stages. First, the love phase: you want to devote your life to learning. Second, the reputation phase: you discover the need to get established. Third, the status phase: you are trapped into a hostile, rank-obsessed, rent-seeking machine with an oppressive hierarchy. You feel an uncontrollable envy for the plumber.

In academia, the less relevant, applicable, or interesting the point, the larger the number of publications around it.