University Quotes

The very least thing one should learn at the university is how to reach new knowledge.

~ Osman Doluca

When Scythrop grew up, he was sent, as usual, to a public school, where a little learning was painfully beaten into him, and from thence to the university, where it was carefully taken out of him; and he was sent home like a well-threshed ear of corn, with nothing in his head.

~ Thomas Love Peacock

He has little hope that university, when he gets there next year, will be any different. Like right now, all these pupils taking notes as if their life depended on it. All for what? he wants to shout. To get into the top university, so that you can somehow convince yourself you are better than the great unwashed? So that your parents can convince themselves that they are better parents than the great unwashed? So that Mum and Dad’s fourteen-hour days at the office, paying for a fucking private education you never asked for, wasn’t just a pathetic waste of a life?

~ Tabitha Suzuma

University, he said quietly. It sounded like a dream; it tasted like damnation.

~ Nora Sakavic

When I worked in astronomy, I routinely observed young college and university students working with liquid nitrogen and breathing nitrogen gas as they discharged it into the indoor environment at high altitude.

~ Steven Magee

So on a scale of one to Adele, how bad was this breakup?

~ Jennifer Lane

The university system, a gift of Western civilization to the world, was developed by the Catholic Church.

~ Thomas E. Woods Jr.

No university in the world has ever risen to greatness without a correspondingly great library ... When this is no longer true, then will our civilization have come to an end.

~ Lawrence Clark Powell

Education is political.

~ Noel Castree

By the Middle Ages… the introduction of the Trivium was well-known: SÂDI, an educated black from Tombouctou, author of the well-known work entitled, ‘Tarikh es-Soudan’ cites amongst the subjects that he mastered, logic, dialection, grammar, rhetoric, not to mention law and other disciplines...the long lists of subjects studied and the lettered African intellectuals who taught them at the University of Tombouctou…

~ Cheikh Anta Diop

A university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library.

~ Shelby Foote

Molly. I have an opportunity for you.”“An opportunity?” I repeated, without enthusiasm. Oh, good. Next comes the part where he tells me to be a “team player” and then dumps some tedious task on me.“It’s a chance for you to show that you can be a team player,” Bill Vogel said.

~ Frankie Bow

I couldn’t bring myself to call him either “Bill,” which would signal friendly familiarity, or “Doctor Vogel,” which would imply respect.

~ Frankie Bow

His name was Ed. His nickname was Scrambled Ed. On leaving school he had taken a year out to decide what he wanted to study at University. The year passed and he still hadn't decided but went to University anyway. 'Academic' is defined as 'of, or relating to, institutionalized education and scholarship'. The same word, at the same time, also means 'having little practical use or value, as by being overly detailed, unengaging or theoretical'. The latter definition seemed the most appropriate for Ed's university career which was a mash up of drinking, diving, surfing, kayaking and having his heart-broken. All washed down with a few pints. After three years of that he was awarded a second class joint honours degree which he put in the recycling bin and went in search of something that would make him feel better.

~ Matt Padwick

In my illustrious career as a university student, I turned in over 100 papers so that one day, in the end, I got 1 paper in return.

~ J.r. Rim

Fortunately, our colleges and universities are fully cognizant of the problems I have been delineating and take concerted action to address them. Curricula are designed to give coherence to the educational experience and to challenge students to develop a strong degree of moral awareness. Professors, deeply involved with the enterprise of undergraduate instruction, are committed to their students' intellectual growth and insist on maintaining the highest standards of academic rigor. Career services keep themselves informed about the broad range of postgraduate options and make a point of steering students away from conventional choices. A policy of noncooperation with U.S. News has taken hold, depriving the magazine of the data requisite to calculate its rankings. Rather than squandering money on luxurious amenities and exorbitant administrative salaries, schools have rededicated themselves to their core missions of teaching and the liberal arts. I'm kidding, of course.

~ William Deresiewicz

Yet here was Morrie talking with the wonder of our college years, as if I'd simply been on a long vacation. ..I once promised I would never work for money, that I would join the Peace Corps, that I would live in beautiful, inspirational places.

~ Mitch Albom

One cannot get rid of a good education, nor, unfortunately, of a bad one, which often is such because one has not wanted to defray the expenses of a good one.

~ Denis Diderot

College towns [are] all the same in that way; same burger, different wrapper.

~ Sheri Webber

I don’t understand why Universities only offer undergraduate classes during the day when their professional staff should be smart enough to know that a large percentage of their students are non-traditional.

~ Heather Chapple

So we might say that the most important thing one can acquire in college is a well-functioning bullshit meter.

~ Andrew Delbanco

Did he talk about silos?”“Of course he did,” I said. “We have to break down the silos that separate the academic side of the house from the Student Retention Office, apparently.”Emma wrinkled her nose. “Why is it a good thing to break silos? All that happens when you break a silo is that the grain spills out. Or the missile falls over.

~ Frankie Bow

What I want to get out of my college course is some knowledge of the best way of living life and doing the most and best with it. I want to learn to understand and help other people and myself.

~ L.m. Montgomery

It is good for a student to be poor. Getting and spending, the typical American college student lays waste his powers. Work and contemplation don't mix, and university days ought to be days of contemplation.

~ Russell Kirk

Most of these students are so conditioned to success that they become afraid to take risks. They have been taught from a young age by zealous parents, schools, and institutional authorities what constitutes failure and success. They are socialized to obey. They obsess over grades and seek to please professors, even if what professors teach is fatuous. The point is to get ahead, and getting ahead means deference to authority. Challenging authority is never a career advancer.

~ Chris Hedges

For the first time I saw a medley of haphazard facts fall into line and order. All the jumbles and recipes and hotchpotch of the inorganic chemistry of my boyhood seemed to fit into the scheme before my eyes—as though one were standing beside a jungle and it suddenly transformed itself into a Dutch garden.[Upon hearing the Periodic Table explained in a first-tern university lecture.]

~ C.p. Snow

It was a common complaint amongst the Arts students that their library was in dire need of refurbishment. To call the old building shabby chic was being kind. It didn’t have automated stacks or self-service machines like the Management and Sciences library the other side of campus and the carpets and bookcases looked like they were probably the Victorian originals. But on days like this one, where the springtime sunshine streamed in through the high windows and set the dust motes dancing, Harriet sincerely felt that those BSc lot could stuff their vending machines and state of the art study pods. The Old Library was clearly suited for those who had poetry in their souls, rather than numbers in their heads.

~ Erin Lawless

I did an A Level in Theatre Studies and had a really inspirational teacher, and then I just went on to university.

~ Jessica Raine

Any type of operating system that I wanted to be able to hack, I basically compromised the source code, copied it over to the university because I didn't have enough space on my 200 megabyte hard drive.

~ Kevin Mitnick

In 1858 I received the degree of D. S. from the Lawrence Scientific School, and thereafter remained on the rolls of the university as a resident graduate.

~ Simon Newcomb

I graduated from the University of Whatever.

~ Dana Snyder

All I wanted was to be a university teacher.

~ Jalal Talabani

I'm not a prophet. I'm not a teacher. I have no degrees. My degree is from the University of Life.

~ Jamie Lee Curtis

I have an education degree from the University of Minnesota, and I was a teacher for about a minute.

~ Loni Anderson

Princeton is a sublime undergraduate university. It has a good architecture school.

~ Emilio Ambasz

I went to Duke University in the medical track. And then I decided I wanted to do something more creative, so I switched to biochemistry at Nebraska.

~ Ken Wilber

I didn't go to university. Didn't even finish A-levels. But I have sympathy for those who did.

~ Terry Pratchett

University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.

~ Henry Kissinger