Academic Authority Quotes

There are two ways of forming an opinion. One is the scientific method; the other, the scholastic. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all-important, and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything, and facts are junked when they do not fit theory.

The person upon whom the schoolboys' attention centred was, of course, the Headmaster.

Innovation is a twofold threat to academic mediocrities: it endangers their oracular authority, and it evokes the deeper fear that their whole, laboriously constructed intellectual edifice might collapse.

The faculty, from adjunct professors to deans, tell you what to do, what to say, and more ominously, what to think.

Dilettantes appreciate the work, professors the master at the same time.

Most universities are no longer temples of knowledge, but of power, and true moderns worship there.

They can shout down the head of the physics department at Cal Tech.

I don't need to be validated by academia, because that presupposes that academia is a pure endeavor and not guided by market forces, which is not the case.

A preoccupation with theory has been a defensive response by academic biographers in this country, I submit, to the condescension of traditional humanists and social scientists pervading higher education for many years.

Being appointed Elder Professor meant very much taking over the shop, in that the professor in those days controlled all the moneys.

I'm not one of those professors whose office is encased floor-to-ceiling with books. By the way, I think academics do this to intimidate their visitors.

Professors could silence me then; they had figures, diagrams, maps, books.... I was learning that books and diagrams can be evil things if they deaden the mind of man and make him blind or cynical before subjection of any kind.

The great thing about writing about the ancient Spartans or Athenians is that so much knowledge is no longer extant that no one, except maybe a Cambridge or Oxford don, can call you out and prove you wrong.

I would write a scientific paper with the devil, if it was on high temperatures. The fellow's probably an authority.