Academic Irrelevance Quotes

[Logic and philosophy] were of no use, in the church or the state, in the cloister or the court, in peace or war, at home or abroad or anywhere but in the schools

Fourteen years in the professor dodge has taught me that one can argue ingeniously on behalf of any theory, applied to any piece of literature. This is rarely harmful, because normally no-one reads such essays.

When I die there may be a paragraph or two in the newspapers. My name will linger in the British Museum Reading Room catalogue for a space at the head of a long list of books for which no one will ever ask.

College had little effect on me. I'd have been the same writer if I'd gone to MIT, except I'd have flunked out sooner.

My Master of Arts degree means nothing at all to these monkeys and I have come to share their indifference.

Personally I am in favour of education but a university is not the place for it.

It was strange: I never had an interest in school because from an early age I knew the only thing I wanted to do was to play music! So I didn't feel so bad not going into school when I was supposed to be there - why do I need Latin, geography, physical education, etc., and to get beaten on a daily basis?

The ceaseless, senseless demand for original scholarship in a number of fields, where only erudition is now possible, has led either to sheer irrelevancy, the famous knowing of more and more about less and less, or to the development of a pseudo-scholarship which actually destroys its object.

Academics act like they are important, but when something is academic it is meaningless. People say, 'It's academic, now let's get work done.'