{"quotes":[{"text":"Shulman argues that work that is valued is work that is presented to colleagues. The failure to make this kind of wider connection weakens the sense of community. This happens in scholarly life when such essential functions as professional service or teaching do not get discussed openly or often enough.","author":"Charles E. Glassick","tags":["academia","communication","scholarship"],"id":12152,"author_id":"Charles+E.+Glassick"},{"text":"I can't be a pessimist because I'm alive. To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter.","author":"James Baldwin","tags":["academia","optimism","pessimism"],"id":13823,"author_id":"James+Baldwin"},{"text":"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.","author":"Sarah Caudwell","tags":["academia","humour"],"id":18108,"author_id":"Sarah+Caudwell"},{"text":"What we have witnessed in our own time is the death of universities as centres of critique. Since Margaret Thatcher, the role of academia has been to service the status quo, not challenge it in the name of justice, tradition, imagination, human welfare, the free play of the mind or alternative visions of the future. We will not change this simply by increasing state funding of the humanities as opposed to slashing it to nothing. We will change it by insisting that a critical reflection on human values and principles should be central to everything that goes on in universities, not just to the study of Rembrandt or Rimbaud.","author":"Terry Eagleton","tags":["2010","2010-uk-student-protests","academia","arthur-rimbaud","humanities","imagination","justice","margaret-thatcher","public-university","radical-politics","radicalism","reactionary-politics","rembrandt","tradition","tuition-fees-uk","university"],"id":32277,"author_id":"Terry+Eagleton"},{"text":"One increasingly hears rumors of a reconciliation between science and religion. In major news magazines as well as at academic conferences, the claim is made that that belief in the success of science in describing the workings of the world is no longer thought to be in conflict with faith in God. I would like to argue against this trend, in favor of a more old-fashioned point of view that is still more characteristic of most scientists, who tend to disbelieve in any religious component to the workings of the universe.","author":"Sean Carroll","tags":["academia","irreligion","irreligious","knowledge","science","science-and-religion","superstition","understanding","universe"],"id":34174,"author_id":"Sean+Carroll"},{"text":"It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one. Those who have followed the assertive idiot rather than the introspective wise person have passed us some of their genes. This is apparent from a social pathology: psychopaths rally followers.","author":"Nassim Nicholas Taleb","tags":["academia","economics","herd-behavior"],"id":43073,"author_id":"Nassim+Nicholas+Taleb"},{"text":"Incidentally, I notice that our professors, trying to show off to their students, rant and rail against the state and against law and order, while expecting that same state to punctually pay their salaries, pensions, and family allowances, so that they value at least this kind of law and order. Make a fist with the left hand and open the right hand receptively—that is how one gets through life.","author":"Ernst Jünger","tags":["academia","leftism","politics"],"id":43377,"author_id":"Ernst+J%C3%BCnger"},{"text":"Social power is at stake in theory-making, but the workings of this power are often unacknowledged -- and overdeter.","author":"Randall Styers","tags":["academia","power"],"id":50335,"author_id":"Randall+Styers"},{"text":"The problem with studying is that it gets in the way of education.","author":"Neel Burton","tags":["academia","college","doctorate","education","studying","university"],"id":55471,"author_id":"Neel+Burton"},{"text":"Just as no monkey is as good-looking as the ugliest of humans, no academic is worthier than the worst of the creators.","author":"Nassim Nicholas Taleb","tags":["academia","academics","art","art-history","artists","arts","creativity","criticism","critics"],"id":56309,"author_id":"Nassim+Nicholas+Taleb"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":73,"pages":8,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}