Academic Mindset Quotes

It took me a couple of years after I got out of Berkeley before I dared to start writing. That academic mind-set - which was kind of shallow in my case anyway - had begun to fade.

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.

I'm very competitive and academic.

The realization that you can't predict the future -- and mold it -- could only come as a shock to an academic.

...even professors of economics, to say nothing of the public, do not generally have scientific minds.

I'm instinctively cautious because I'm an academic.

I wanted to do well academically. But it was equally important to do things in an effortless manner.

As Littlewood said to me once [of the ancient Greeks], they are not clever school boys or "scholarship candidates," but "Fellows of another college."

A lot of my research time is spent daydreaming - telling an imaginary admiring audience of laymen how to understand some difficult scientific idea.

I never intended to be a teacher. I just like going to school and learning things.

I think I may have too much of a scientific mindset and am always looking for the caveats and qualifications in any situation. I never thought seriously of doing a PhD until relatively late in the day. I was always diligent at the book-work at university but the brightest amongst my friends all seemed to have a more intuitive grasp of the subject.

I see myself as a student. Trying to learn everything.