I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them.
I take it for granted, when I am invited to lecture anywhere,--for I have had a little experience in that business,--that there isa desire to hear what I think on some subject, though I may be the greatest fool in the country,--and not that I should say pleasant things merely, or such as an audience will assent to; and I resolve, accordingly, that I will give them a strong dose of myself. They have sent for me, and engaged to pay for me, and I am determined that they shall have me, though I bore them beyond all precedent.
I was young not too long ago, and I know the last thing you want is someone preaching to you.
The last thing I ever want to do is be preachy.
Teaching how to think is better than lecturing how to do it.
When I was a lecturer at UC Berkeley, I wrote a book about monsters.
I have taught history on the high school and college levels, and am or have been a lecturer at the Smithsonian, The National Institutes of Health, and numerous colleges and universities, mostly on science fiction and technology subjects.
I'd like to be an academic, a philosophy lecturer if possible. I'd do a Masters in Ancient Hebrew maybe, and a Ph.D. hopefully, if I get in.
I'm not going to be lectured to.
I have long felt that the way to keep children out of trouble is to keep them interested in things. Lecturing to children is no answer to delinquency. Preaching won't keep youngsters out of trouble, but keeping their minds occupied will.
Not all. Some of them he probably lectured to death.
Nobody likes to be preached to.
Every minister, lecturer and public speaker know the discouragement of pouring himself of herself out to an audience and not receiving a single ripple of appreciative comment.
However, I should perhaps add that during the 20 years I have been back in Cambridge, I have been actively involved in the teaching of undergraduates, as well as of course supervising research students.
I don't want to preach to people.
My parents never really lecture me.
I have lectured at Town Hall N.Y., The Library of Congress, Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Wellesley, Columbia, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Louisiana State University, Colorado, Stanford, and scores of other places.
A lecture is an occasion when you numb one end to benefit the other.
In the end I created a career of my own, concentrating on my writing and lecturing, reaching larger audiences than I would had I ended up with tenure and a full teaching load. It was Virginia Woolf who said that it is terrible to be frozen out of a sacred tradition - but even more terrible to be frozen into it.
He speaks to Me as if I was a public meeting.
I had been a college teacher. I had taught Greek mythology.
When you're lecturing teenagers and they begin to hum and leave the room, you can sense there is hostility.
The Americans have always been more open to my ideas. In fact, I could earn a living in America just by lecturing. One of my brightest audiences, incidentally, were the prisoners in a Philadelphia gaol - brighter than my students at university.
I look forward to teaching the occasional class, 'cause I was a professor. And I had fun doing it.
That's important, apologizing, listening, you know, I think the teens I speak with, most of them don't feel understood. They feel like they're being lectured to all the time.
