Scholarship Quotes

“Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.”
― Richard Feynmann

“A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special.”
― Nelson Mandela

“The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.”
― John Adams, Letters of John Adams, Addressed to His Wife

“Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art. ”
― Susan Sontag

“What is a woman's place in this modern world? Jasnah Kholin's words read. I rebel against this question, though so many of my peers ask it. The inherent bias in the inquiry seems invisible to so many of them. They consider themselves progressive because they are willing to challenge many of the assumptions of the past.

They ignore the greater assumption--that a 'place' for women must be defined and set forth to begin with. Half of the population must somehow be reduced to the role arrived at by a single conversation. No matter how broad that role is, it will be--by-nature--a reduction from the infinite variety that is womanhood.

I say that there is no role for women--there is, instead, a role for each woman, and she must make it for herself. For some, it will be the role of scholar; for others, it will be the role of wife. For others, it will be both. For yet others, it will be neither.

Do not mistake me in assuming I value one woman's role above another. My point is not to stratify our society--we have done that far to well already--my point is to diversify our discourse.

A woman's strength should not be in her role, whatever she chooses it to be, but in the power to choose that role. It is amazing to me that I even have to make this point, as I see it as the very foundation of our conversation.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Words of Radiance

“Academia is the death of cinema. It is the very opposite of passion. Film is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates.”
― Werner Herzog

“The old man was peering intently at the shelves. 'I'll have to admit that he's a very competent scholar.'
Isn't he just a librarian?' Garion asked, 'somebody who looks after books?'
That's where all the rest of scholarship starts, Garion. All the books in the world won't help you if they're just piled up in a heap.”
― David Eddings, King of the Murgos

“Too many scholars think of research as purely a cerebral pursuit. If we do nothing with the knowledge we gain, then we have wasted our study. Books can store information better than we can--what we we do that books cannot is interpret. So if one is not going to draw conclusions, then one might as well just leave the information in the texts.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“They're so cold, these scholars!
May lightning strike their food
so that their mouths learn how
to eat fire!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“...most people in the ancient world, did not make a sharp distinction between myth and reality. The two were intimately tied together in their spiritual experience. That is to say, they were less interested in what actually happened, than in what it meant. It would have been perfectly normal, indeed expected, for a writer in the ancient world, to tell tales of gods and heroes, whose fundamental facts would have been recognized as false, but whose underlying message would have been seen as true.”
― Reza Aslan, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

“An intellectual snob is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of The Lone Ranger. ”
― Dan Rather

“Sexual frenzy is our compensation for the tedious moments we must suffer in the passage of life. 'Nothing in excess,' professed the ancient Greeks. Why if I spend half the month in healthy scholarship and pleasant sleep, shouldn't I be allowed the other half to howl at the moon and pillage the groins of Europe's great beauties?”
― Roman Payne

“I will go wherever the truth leads me. It is secular scholarship, Rebbe; it is not the scholarship of tradition. In secular scholarship there are no boundaries and no permanently fixed views.”
Lurie, if the Torah cannot go out into your world of scholarship and return stronger, then we are all fools and charlatans. I have faith in the Torah. I am not afraid of truth.”
― Chaim Potok, In the Beginning

“History never repeats itself, historians do.”
― Lee Benson, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case

“Politics bores you?" Bronsen said.

Julien smiled. "It does. Apologies, sir, and it is not that I haven't tried to be fascinated. But careful and meticulous research has suggested the hypothesis that all politicians are liars, fools, and tricksters, and I have as yet come across no evidence to the contrary. They can do great damage, and rarely any good. It is the job of the sensible man to try and protect civilization from their depradations.”
― Iain Pears, The Dream of Scipio

“All scholars are a bit mad. All obsessions are dangerous.”
― A.S. Byatt, Possession. A romance

“[...] it is safer to wander without a guide through an unmapped country than to trust completely a map traced by men who came only as tourists and often with biased judgement. ”
― Marie-Louise Sjoestedt, Gods and Heroes of the Celts

“...the ongoing suspicion that scientific discoveries or rigorous biblical scholarship will undermine faith is a tacit admission that faith is threatened by knowledge, because it is ultimately constructed on weak or faulty assumptions and, like the proverbial house of cards, needs to be "protected" from collapsing. (p. 21)”
― Robin R. Meyers, Saving Jesus from the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus

“Many are the scholars who make it their professional occupation to occupy themselves in this towering edifice of culture, exploring its nook and crannies, developing their responses, making their contributions here and there, and helping to hand it on to succeeding generations. For some the temptation proves irresistible to go yet farther and make this the concern of their lives, letting society go its own sorry way while they lock themselves away in this abiding, socially transcendent cultural stronghold, acquiescing in society while pursuing Bildung. As Rotterdam burns, they study Sanskrit verb forms.”
― Nicholas Wolterstorff, Until Justice and Peace Embrace

“The point of Christian scholarship is not recognition by standards established in the wider culture. The point is to praise God with the mind. Such efforts will lead to the kind of intellectual integrity that sometimes receives recognition. But for the Christian that recognition is only a fairly inconsequential by-product. The real point is valuing what God has made, believing that the creation is as "good" as he said it was, and exploring the fullest dimensions of what it meant for the Son of God to "become flesh and dwell among us." Ultimately, intellectual work of this sort is its own reward, because it is focused on the only One whose recognition is important, the One before whom all hearts are open.”
― Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

“MAN: Mr. Chomsky, I’m wondering what specific qualifications you have to be able to speak all around the country about world affairs?
 
None whatsoever. I mean, the qualifications that I have to speak on world affairs are exactly the same ones Henry Kissinger has, and Walt Rostow has, or anybody in the Political Science Department, professional historians—none, none that you don’t have. The only difference is, I don’t pretend to have qualifications, nor do I pretend that qualifications are needed. I mean, if somebody were to ask me to give a talk on quantum physics, I’d refuse—because I don’t understand enough. But world affairs are trivial: there’s nothing in the social sciences or history or whatever that is beyond the intellectual capacities of an ordinary fifteen-year-old. You have to do a little work, you have to do some reading, you have to be able to think, but there’s nothing deep—if there are any theories around that require some special kind of training to understand, then they’ve been kept a carefully guarded secret.
In fact, I think the idea that you’re supposed to have special qualifications to talk about world affairs is just another scam—it’s kind of like Leninism [position that socialist revolution should be led by a “vanguard” party]: it’s just another technique for making the population feel that they don’t know anything, and they’d better just stay out of it and let us smart guys run it. In order to do that, what you pretend is that there’s some esoteric discipline, and you’ve got to have some letters after your name before you can say anything about it. The fact is, that’s a joke.
 
MAN: But don’t you also use that system too, because of your name-recognition and the fact that you’re a famous linguist? I mean, would I be invited to go somewhere and give talks?
 
You think I was invited here because people know me as a linguist? Okay, if that was the reason, then it was a bad mistake. But there are plenty of other linguists around, and they aren’t getting invited to places like this—so I don’t really think that can be the reason. I assumed that the reason is that these are topics that I’ve written a lot about, and I’ve spoken a lot about, and I’ve demonstrated a lot about, and I’ve gone to jail about, and so on and so forth—I assumed that’s the reason. If it’s not, well, then it’s a bad mistake. If anybody thinks that you should listen to me because I’m a professor at M.I.T., that’s nonsense. You should decide whether something makes sense by its content, not by the letters after the name of the person who says it. And the idea that you’re supposed to have special qualifications to talk about things that are common sense, that’s just another scam—it’s another way to try to marginalize people, and you shouldn’t fall for it.”
― Noam Chomsky, Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky

“Bad writing, it is easily verified, has never kept scholarship from being published.”
― Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present

“It is a wholly deplorable state of affairs when specialists in any discipline talk only to each other, and accordingly I have sought to write a book which will communicate some of the fruits of research in a manner which will make them accessible to all.”
― Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity

“As Luxenberg's work has only recently been published we must await its scholarly assessment before we can pass any judgements. But if his analysis is correct then suicide bombers, or rather prospective martyrs, would do well to abandon their culture of death, and instead concentrate on getting laid 72 times in this world, unless of course they would really prefer chilled or white raisins, according to their taste, in the next.”
― Ibn Warraq

“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.”
― Charles E. Glassick, Scholarship Assessed: Evaluation of the Professoriate

“I met them in Minneapolis when the Society hosted a brunch for this year's winners and gave us these oversized checks they had us pose with. The picture made the front page of the Le Sueur News Herald.
It was really embarrassing because I'm smiling with my eyes shut.
And if that wasn't bad enough, Russ made a huge copy of the photo, replacing the background with a highway scene and the check I was holding with a sign that said NEED RIDE TO STAR TREK CONVENTION.”
― Brian Malloy, Twelve Long Months

“Much scholarship is nothing more than political activism, and much teaching nothing more than indoctrination.”
― Bradley Campbell, The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and the New Culture Wars

“Interpreting events;' interpreting the universally visible, entirely INdubitable Revelation of the Author of this Universe: how can Dryasdust interpret such things, the dark chaotic dullard, who knows the meaning of nothing cosmic or noble, nor ever will know? Poor wretch, one sees what kind of meaning HE educes from Man's History, this long while past, and has got all the world to believe of it along with him. Unhappy Dryasdust, thrice-unhappy world that takes Dryasdust's reading of the ways of God!”
― Thomas Carlyle, History Of Friedrich II of Prussia Volumes 1 - 9: Frederick the Great

“To feel history through the things it left behind. But to do that is not to be with the living... It's dead. All of it. That's the real task of a scholar, to become a necromancer... so many of us forget the true purpose is to reanimate the thing. Even, sometimes, at the cost of animating ourselves.”
― Katy Hays, The Cloisters

“Even when they claim to be critical, scholarly writings about tradition turn out to be in league with the tradition they describe.”
― Bernard Faure, Chan Insights and Oversights