Quotes about Academia

I am now convinced that theoretical physics is actual philosophy.

Many Christians with Ph.D.'s have simply absorbed a two-track approach to their subject, treating science or sociology or history as though it consisted of religiously neutral knowledge, where biblical truth has nothing important to say.

To become an academic expert takes years of studying. Academic experts are experts in how and what others have done. They use case studies and observation to understand a subject.

After a lifetime in academia, I have discovered that there is only one requirement for someone to actually believe any of the one hundred most absurd ideas possible for a human mind to conceive: you must be an intellectual. Some ideas are so ridiculous that only a Ph.D. could believe them.

The Christian of academic tastes accuses his brother of undue emotionalism, of shallow argumentation, of cheap methods of work. On the other hand, your practical man is ever loud in his denunciation of academic indifference to the dire needs of humanity. The scholar is represented either as a dangerous dissemination of doubt, or else as a man whose faith is a faith without works.

College mostly makes people like bladders—just good for nothing but t' hold the stuff as is poured into 'em.

As feminism has changed academia by enlarging what is taught, academia has sometimes changed feminism.

As 'Possession' progresses, it seems less and less like the usual satire about academia and more like something by Jorge Luis Borges.

To exaggerate a bit: academic theology today is composed of specialists in an unrespected discipline who write for fellow specialists about topics that interest hardly anyone else.

Those who go to college and never get out are called professors.

Following Rice, I went to Caltech for a Ph.D in physics, without any strong idea of what I wanted to do for a thesis topic.

The intelligentsia are those who have been educated beyond their intelligence.