Philosophy

A book is the work of a mind, doing its work in the way that a mind deems best. That's dangerous. Is the work of some mere individual mind likely to serve the aims of collectively accepted compromises, which are known in the schools as 'standards'? Any mind that would audaciously put itself forth to work all alone is surely a bad example for the students, and probably, if not downright antisocial, at least a little off-center, self-indulgent, elitist. ... It's just good pedagogy, therefore, to stay away from such stuff, and use instead, if film-strips and rap-sessions must be supplemented, 'texts,' selected, or prepared, or adapted, by real professionals. Those texts are called 'reading material.' They are the academic equivalent of the 'listening material' that fills waiting-rooms, and the 'eating material' that you can buy in thousands of convenient eating resource centers along the roads.

— The Underground Grammarian

A definition of teaching: casting fake pearls before real swine.

— Bill Cain, "Stand Up Tragedy"

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

— G. B. Shaw

A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea.

— John Ciardi

A grammarian's life is always in tense.

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

— William James

A mother mouse was taking her large brood for a stroll across the kitchen floor one day when the local cat, by a feat of stealth unusual even for its species, managed to trap them in a corner. The children cowered, terrified by this fearsome beast, plaintively crying, "Help, Mother! Save us! Save us! We're scared, Mother!" Mother Mouse, with the hopeless valor of a parent protecting its children, turned with her teeth bared to the cat, towering huge above them, and suddenly began to bark in a fashion that would have done any Doberman proud. The startled cat fled in fear for its life. As her grateful offspring flocked around her shouting "Oh, Mother, you saved us!" and "Yay! You scared the cat away!" she turned to them purposefully and declared, "You see how useful it is to know a second language?"

A Parable of Modern Research: Bob has lost his keys in a room which is dark except for one brightly lit corner. "Why are you looking under the light, you lost them in the dark!" "I can only see here."

A pencil with no point needs no eraser.

A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.

A reader reports that when the patient died, the attending doctor recorded the following on the patient's chart: "Patient failed to fulfill his wellness potential." Another doctor reports that in a recent issue of the *American Journal of Family Practice* fleas were called "hematophagous arthropod vectors." A reader reports that the Army calls them "vertically deployed anti- personnel devices." You probably call them bombs. At McClellan Air Force base in Sacramento, California, civilian mechanics were placed on "non-duty, non-pay status." That is, they were fired. After taking the trip of a lifetime, our reader sent his twelve rolls of film to Kodak for developing (or "processing," as Kodak likes to call it) only to receive the following notice: "We must report that during the handling of your twelve 35mm Kodachrome slide orders, the films were involved in an unusual laboratory experience." The use of the passive is a particularly nice touch, don't you think? Nobody did anything to the films; they just had a bad experience. Of course our reader can always go back to Tibet and take his pictures all over again, using the twelve replacement rolls Kodak so generously sent him.

— Quarterly Review of Doublespeak (NCTE)

A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an exam.

A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of.

— Burt Bacharach

A tautology is a thing which is tautological.

A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.

— John Ciardi

"A University without students is like an ointment without a fly."

— Ed Nather, professor of astronomy at UT Austin

About all some men accomplish in life is to send a son to Harvard.

Abstract: This study examined the incidence of neckwear tightness among a group of 94 white-collar working men and the effect of a tight business-shirt collar and tie on the visual performance of 22 male subjects. Of the white-collar men measured, 67\% were found to be wearing neckwear that was tighter than their neck circumference. The visual discrimination of the 22 subjects was evaluated using a critical flicker frequency (CFF) test. Results of the CFF test indicated that tight neckwear significantly decreased the visual performance of the subjects and that visual performance did not improve immediately when tight neckwear was removed.

— Langan, L.M. and Watkins, S.M. "Pressure of Menswear on the Neck in Relation to Visual Performance." Human Factors 29, #

Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low.

— Wallace Sayre

Academicians care, that's who.

An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.

— Benjamin Franklin

Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

As Gen. de Gaulle occassionally acknowledges America to be the daughter of Europe, so I am pleased to come to Yale, the daughter of Harvard.

— J.F. Kennedy

As long as the answer is right, who cares if the question is wrong?

Briefly stated, the findings are that when presented with an array of data or a sequence of events in which they are instructed to discover an underlying order, subjects show strong tendencies to perceive order and causality in random arrays, to perceive a pattern or correlation which seems a priori intuitively correct even when the actual correlation in the data is counterintuitive, to jump to conclusions about the correct hypothesis, to seek and to use only positive or confirmatory evidence, to construe evidence liberally as confirmatory, to fail to generate or to assess alternative hypotheses, and having thus managed to expose themselves only to confirmatory instances, to be fallaciously confident of the validity of their judgments (Jahoda, 1969; Einhorn and Hogarth, 1978). In the analyzing of past events, these tendencies are exacerbated by failure to appreciate the pitfalls of post hoc analyses.

— A. Benjamin

British education is probably the best in the world, if you can survive it. If you can't there is nothing left for you but the diplomatic corps.

— Peter Ustinov

... But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as we can tell. If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding of their world, not in their distorted perceptions. Even the standard example of ancient nonsense -- the debate about angels on pinheads -- makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a finite or an infinite number.

— S. J. Gould, "Wide Hats and Narrow Minds"

Campus sidewalks never exist as the straightest line between two points.

— M. M. Johnston

Comparing information and knowledge is like asking whether the fatness of a pig is more or less green than the designated hitter rule."

— David Guaspari

Dear Freshman, You don't know who I am and frankly shouldn't care, but unknown to you we have something in common. We are both rather prone to mistakes. I was elected Student Government President by mistake, and you came to school here by mistake.

Dear Miss Manners: My home economics teacher says that one must never place one's elbows on the table. However, I have read that one elbow, in between courses, is all right. Which is correct? Gentle Reader: For the purpose of answering examinations in your home economics class, your teacher is correct. Catching on to this principle of education may be of even greater importance to you now than learning correct current table manners, vital as Miss Manners believes that is.

Department chairmen never die, they just lose their faculties.

Did you know the University of Iowa closed down after someone stole the book?

Do not clog intellect's sluices with bits of knowledge of questionable uses.

Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is what you get when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.

— Pete Seeger

Do you think that illiterate people get the full effect of alphabet soup?

Education and religion are two things not regulated by supply and demand. The less of either the people have, the less they want.

— Charlotte Observer, 1897

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

— Oscar Wilde, "The Critic as Artist"

Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know.

— Daniel J. Boorstin

Education is the process of casting false pearls before real swine.

— Irwin Edman

Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten.

— B.F. Skinner

Educational television should be absolutely forbidden. It can only lead to unreasonable disappointment when your child discovers that the letters of the alphabet do not leap up out of books and dance around with royal-blue chickens.

— Fran Lebowitz, "Social Studies"

Eloquence is logic on fire.

Encyclopedia for sale by father. Son knows everything.

Engineering: "How will this work?" Science: "Why will this work?" Management: "When will this work?" Liberal Arts: "Do you want fries with that?"

Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?

— Clarence Darrow

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

— Flannery O'Connor

Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for even the greatest fool may ask more the the wisest man can answer.

— C.C. Colton

Experience is the worst teacher. It always gives the test first and the instruction afterward.

F u cn rd ths u cnt spl wrth a dm!

f u cn rd ths, itn tyg h myxbl cd.

f u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgrmmng.

f u cn rd ths, u r prbbly a lsy spllr.

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.

— Robert Parker, quoted in "Murder Ink", ed. D. Wynn

Going to church does not make a person religious, nor does going to school make a person educated, any more than going to a garage makes a person a car.

Good day to avoid cops. Crawl to school.

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths good theatre.

— Gail Godwin

Graduate life: It's not just a job. It's an indenture.

Graduate students and most professors are no smarter than undergrads. They're just older.

He that teaches himself has a fool for a master.

— Benjamin Franklin

"He was a modest, good-humored boy. It was Oxford that made him insufferable."

He who writes with no misspelled words has prevented a first suspicion on the limits of his scholarship or, in the social world, of his general education and culture.

— Julia Norton McCorkle

[He] took me into his library and showed me his books, of which he had a complete set.

— Ring Lardner

Higher education helps your earning capacity. Ask any college professor.

History books which contain no lies are extremely dull.

History is nothing but a collection of fables and useless trifles, cluttered up with a mass of unnecessary figures and proper names.

— Leo Tolstoy

How do you explain school to a higher intelligence?

— Elliot, "E.T."

I am a bookaholic. If you are a decent person, you will not sell me another book.

"I am not sure what this is, but an `F' would only dignify it."

— English Professor

I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.

— Professor Lowd, English, Ohio University

I appreciate the fact that this draft was done in haste, but some of the sentences that you are sending out in the world to do your work for you are loitering in taverns or asleep beside the highway.

— Dr. Dwight Van de Vate, Professor of Philosophy, University of Tennessee at Knoxville

I came out of twelve years of college and I didn't even know how to sew. All I could do was account -- I couldn't even account for myself.

— Firesign Theatre

I came to MIT to get an education for myself and a diploma for my mother.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.

— Blaise Pascal

"I have to convince you, or at least snow you ..."

— Prof. Romas Aleliunas, CS 435

I heard a definition of an intellectual, that I thought was very interesting: a man who takes more words than are necessary to tell more than he knows.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you an education.

— Wilson Mizner

I think your opinions are reasonable, except for the one about my mental instability.

— Psychology Professor, Farifield University

"I'm returning this note to you, instead of your paper, because it (your paper) presently occupies the bottom of my bird cage."

— English Professor, Providence College

If any man wishes to be humbled and mortified, let him become president of Harvard.

— Edward Holyoke

If he had only learnt a little less, how infinitely better he might have taught much more!

If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?

If little else, the brain is an educational toy.

— Tom Robbins

If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied harder.

— Pope John Paul I

If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude. See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The college, which should be a place of delightful labor, is made odious and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded spirits. I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

If truth is beauty, how come no one has their hair done in the library?

— Lily Tomlin

If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.

— Wittgenstein

If while you are in school, there is a shortage of qualified personnel in a particular field, then by the time you graduate with the necessary qualifications, that field's employment market is glutted.

— Marguerite Emmons

If you are too busy to read, then you are too busy.

If you can't read this, blame a teacher.

If you resist reading what you disagree with, how will you ever acquire deeper insights into what you believe? The things most worth reading are precisely those that challenge our convictions.

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

— Derek Bok, president of Harvard

If you took all the students that felt asleep in class and laid them end to end, they'd be a lot more comfortable.

— "Graffiti in the Big Ten"

"If you understand what you're doing, you're not learning anything."

— A. L.

Ignorance is never out of style. It was in fashion yesterday, it is the rage today, and it will set the pace tomorrow.

— Franklin K. Dane

Ignorance is when you don't know anything and somebody finds it out.

Ignorance must certainly be bliss or there wouldn't be so many people so resolutely pursuing it.

Illiterate? Write today, for free help!

In California, Bill Honig, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, said he thought the general public should have a voice in defining what an excellent teacher should know. "I would not leave the definition of math," Dr. Honig said, "up to the mathematicians."

— The New York Times, October 22, 1985

Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth.

— The Best of Will Rogers

Iowa State -- the high school after high school!

— Crow T. Robot

It has long been an article of our folklore that too much knowledge or skill, or especially consummate expertise, is a bad thing. It dehumanizes those who achieve it, and makes difficult their commerce with just plain folks, in whom good old common sense has not been obliterated by mere book learning or fancy notions. This popular delusion flourishes now more than ever, for we are all infected with it in the schools, where educationists have elevated it from folklore to Article of Belief. It enhances their self-esteem and lightens their labors by providing theoretical justification for deciding that appreciation, or even simple awareness, is more to be prized than knowledge, and relating (to self and others), more than skill, in which minimum competence will be quite enough.

— The Underground Grammarian

It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking about what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the numbers of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in battle -- they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.

— Alfred North Whitehead

It's grad exam time... COMPUTER SCIENCE Inside your desk you'll find a listing of the DEC/VMS operating system in IBM 1710 machine code. Show what changes are necessary to convert this code into a UNIX Berkeley 7 operating system. Prove that these fixes are bug free and run correctly. You should gain at least 150\% efficiency in the new system. (You should take no more than 10 minutes on this question.) MATHEMATICS If X equals PI times R^2, construct a formula showing how long it would take a fire ant to drill a hole through a dill pickle, if the length-girth ratio of the ant to the pickle were 98.17:1. GENERAL KNOWLEDGE Describe the Universe. Give three examples.

It's grad exam time... MEDICINE You have been provided with a razor blade, a piece of gauze, and a bottle of Scotch. Remove your appendix. Do not suture until your work has been inspected. (You have 15 minutes.) HISTORY Describe the history of the papacy from its origins to the present day, concentrating especially, but not exclusively, on its social, political, economic, religious and philisophical impact upon Europe, Asia, America, and Africa. Be brief, concise, and specific. BIOLOGY Create life. Estimate the differences in subsequent human culture if this form of life had been created 500 million years ago or earlier, with special attention to its probable effect on the English parliamentary system.

It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it is. If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's. It isn't our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs.

— Oxford University Press, Edpress News

Joe Cool always spends the first two weeks at college sailing his frisbee.

— Snoopy

Learned men are the cisterns of knowledge, not the fountainheads.

Learning at some schools is like drinking from a firehose.

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.

— Confucius

Maybe ain't ain't so correct, but I notice that lots of folks who ain't using ain't ain't eatin' well.

— Will Rogers

Most seminars have a happy ending. Everyone's glad when they're over.

My father, a good man, told me, "Never lose your ignorance; you cannot replace it."

— Erich Maria Remarque

Never have so many understood so little about so much.

— James Burke

Never let your schooling interfere with your education.

No discipline is ever requisite to force attendance upon lectures which are really worth the attending.

— Adam Smith, "The Wealth of Nations"

No matter who you are, some scholar can show you the great idea you had was had by someone before you.

No wonder you're tired! You understood so much today.

Normally our rules are rigid; we tend to discretion, if for no other reason than self-protection. We never recommend any of our graduates, although we cheerfully provide information as to those who have failed their courses.

— Jack Vance, "Freitzke's Turn"

"OK, now let's look at four dimensions on the blackboard."

— Dr. Joy

OK, so you're a Ph.D. Just don't touch anything.

One cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs -- but it is amazing how many eggs one can break without making a decent omelette.

— Professor Charles P. Issawi

Periphrasis is the putting of things in a round-about way. "The cost may be upwards of a figure rather below 10m#." is a periphrasis for The cost may be nearly 10m#. "In Paris there reigns a complete absence of really reliable news" is a periphrasis for There is no reliable news in Paris. "Rarely does the 'Little Summer' linger until November, but at times its stay has been prolonged until quite late in the year's penultimate month" contains a periphrasis for November, and another for lingers. "The answer is in the negative" is a periphrasis for No. "Was made the recipient of" is a periphrasis for Was presented with. The periphrasis style is hardly possible on any considerable scale without much use of abstract nouns such as "basis, case, character, connexion, dearth, description, duration, framework, lack, nature, reference, regard, respect". The existence of abstract nouns is a proof that abstract thought has occurred; abstract thought is a mark of civilized man; and so it has come about that periphrasis and civilization are by many held to be inseparable. These good people feel that there is an almost indecent nakedness, a reversion to barbarism, in saying No news is good news instead of "The absence of intelligence is an indication of satisfactory developments."

— Fowler's English Usage

"Plaese porrf raed."

— Prof. Michael O'Longhlin, S.U.N.Y. Purchase

Practice is the best of all instructors.

— Publilius

Princeton's taste is sweet like a strawberry tart. Harvard's is a subtle taste, like whiskey, coffee, or tobacco. It may even be a bad habit, for all I know.

— Prof. J.H. Finley '25

Professor Gorden Newell threw another shutout in last week's Chem Eng. 130 midterm. Once again a student did not receive a single point on his exam. Newell has now tossed 5 shutouts this quarter. Newell's earned exam average has now dropped to a phenomenal 30\%.

Reading is thinking with someone else's head instead of one's own.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

Reporter: "How did you like school when you were growing up, Yogi?" Yogi Berra: "Closed."

Smartness runs in my family. When I went to school I was so smart my teacher was in my class for five years.

— George Burns

Some scholars are like donkeys, they merely carry a lot of books.

— Folk saying

"Speed is subsittute fo accurancy."

Spelling is a lossed art.

Suddenly, Professor Liebowitz realizes he has come to the seminar without his duck ...

Teachers have class.

The 'A' is for content, the 'minus' is for not typing it. Don't ever do this to my eyes again.

— Professor Ronald Brady, Philosophy, Ramapo State College

The alarm clock that is louder than God's own belongs to the roommate with the earliest class.

The average Ph.D thesis is nothing but the transference of bones from one graveyard to another.

— J. Frank Dobie, "A Texan in England"

The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D.

— Nelson Algren, "Writers at Work"

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then -- to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn."

— T.H. White, "The Once and Future King"

The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning, and does not stop until you get to school.

The college graduate is presented with a sheepskin to cover his intellectual nakedness.

— Robert M. Hutchins

The end of the world will occur at three p.m., this Friday, with symposium to follow.

The future is a race between education and catastrophe.

— H.G. Wells

The important thing is not to stop questioning.

The man who has never been flogged has never been taught.

— Menander

The only thing that experience teaches us is that experience teaches us nothing.

— Andre Maurois (Emile Herzog)

The problem with graduate students, in general, is that they have to sleep every few days.

The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is a constant, but nowadays the illiterates can read.

— Alberto Moravia

The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking.

— Christopher Morley

"The student in question is performing minimally for his peer group and is an emerging underachiever."

The sum of the intelligence of the world is constant. The population is, of course, growing.

The sunlights differ, but there is only one darkness.

— Ursula K. LeGuin, "The Dispossessed"

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

The three best things about going to school are June, July, and August.

The Tree of Learning bears the noblest fruit, but noble fruit tastes bad.

The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging from the unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its yielding a more bounteous harvest of gobbledegook than the rest of the world put together.

— Sir Peter Medawar

The world is coming to an end! Repent and return those library books!

The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind.

— E.B. White

There are no answers, only cross-references.

— Weiner

This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.

— Winston Churchill

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these only gave life, those the art of living well.

— Aristotle

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.

— Hector Berlioz

To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.

— Epictetus

To craunch a marmoset.

— Pedro Carolino, "English as She is Spoke"

To teach is to learn twice.

— Joseph Joubert

To teach is to learn.

Try not to have a good time ... This is supposed to be educational.

— Charles Schulz

Trying to get an education here is like trying to get a drink from a fire hose.

Universities are places of knowledge. The freshman each bring a little in with them, and the seniors take none away, so knowledge accumulates.

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

— Henry Kissinger

Walt: Dad, what's gradual school? Garp: Gradual school? Walt: Yeah. Mom says her work's more fun now that she's teaching gradual school. Garp: Oh. Well, gradual school is someplace you go and gradually find out that you don't want to go to school anymore.

— The World According To Garp

"We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"

— Vroomfondel

We know next to nothing about virtually everything. It is not necessary to know the origin of the universe; it is necessary to want to know. Civilization depends not on any particular knowledge, but on the disposition to crave knowledge.

— George Will

We're fantastically incredibly sorry for all these extremely unreasonable things we did. I can only plead that my simple, barely-sentient friend and myself are underprivileged, deprived and also college students.

— Waldo D.R. Dobbs

"We're running out of adjectives to describe our situation. We had crisis, then we went into chaos, and now what do we call this?" said Nicaraguan economist Francisco Mayorga, who holds a doctorate from Yale.

— The Washington Post, February, 1988 The New Yorker's comment: At Harvard they'd call it a noun.

What does education often do? It makes a straight cut ditch of a free meandering brook.

— Henry David Thoreau

What I Did During My Fall Semester On the first day of my fall semester, I got up. Then I went to the library to find a thesis topic. Then I hung out in front of the Dover. On the second day of my fall semester, I got up. Then I went to the library to find a thesis topic. Then I hung out in front of the Dover. On the third day of my fall semester, I got up. Then I went to the library to find a thesis topic. I found a thesis topic: How to keep people from hanging out in front of the Dover.

— Sister Mary Elephant, "Student Statement for Black Friday"

What makes you think graduate school is supposed to be satisfying?

— Erica Jong, "Fear of Flying"

What passes for optimism is most often the effect of an intellectual error.

— Raymond Aron, "The Opium of the Intellectuals"

What we do not understand we do not possess.

— Goethe

What's page one, a preemptive strike?

— Professor Freund, Communication, Ramapo State College

When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.

— Woody Allen

Whenever anyone says, "theoretically," they really mean, "not really."

— Dave Parnas

Where do I find the time for not reading so many books?

— Karl Kraus

"Whom are you?" said he, for he had been to night school.

— George Ade

Wouldn't the sentence "I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign" have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?

You can't expect a boy to be vicious till he's been to a good school.

— H.H. Munro

You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.

— J. D. Salinger

You may have heard that a dean is to faculty as a hydrant is to a dog.

— Alfred Kahn

"You should, without hesitation, pound your typewriter into a plowshare, your paper into fertilizer, and enter agriculture"

— Business Professor, University of Georgia

Your education begins where what is called your education is over.