Academic Freedom Quotes

Numerous are the academic chairs, but rare are wise and noble teachers. Numerous and large are the lecture halls, but far from numerous the young people who genuinely thirst for truth and justice. Numerous are the wares that nature produces by the dozen, but her choice products are few.
We all know that, so why complain? Was it not always thus and will it not always thus remain? Certainly, and one must take what nature gives as one finds it. But there is also such a thing as a spirit of the times, an attitude of mind characteristic of a particular generation, which is passed on from individual to individual and gives its distinctive mark to a society. Each of us has to his little bit toward transforming this spirit of the times. ~ Albert Einstein

Great research universities must insist on independence from government and on the exercise of academic freedom. ~ Alan Dershowitz

When a liberal professor takes enormous intellectual liberties by openly promoting an ideological agenda to his students, the cry of academic freedom rings across the quads. But when a conservative professor is punished for publishing an article in a politically incorrect journal, there is no defense of intellectual diversity. What is billed as academic neutrality turns out to be a smoke screen for the relativistic liberal agenda.

Today's relativists could not have gotten away with their double standards in a culture that prized truth. But a gradual, sustained assault on truth has been carried out through the soft underbelly of Western culture: the arts. In film, music, and television, the themes of sensual pleasure and individual choice have drowned out the tried-and-true virtues of faith, family, self-sacrifice, duty, honor, patriotism, and fidelity in marriage. Cultural mechanics have wielded their tools to dull the public's sense of reasonable limits. In an Age of Consent, the silly and the profound are becoming indistinguishable. ~ Gary L. Bauer

Churchmen are quick to defend religious freedom; lawyers were never so universally aroused as by President Roosevelt's Court bill; newspapers are most alert to civil liberties when there is a hint of press censorship in the air. And educators become perturbed at every effort to curb academic freedom. But too seldom do all of these become militant when ostensibly the rights of only one group are threatened. They do not always react to the truism that when the rights of any individual or group are chipped away, the freedom of all erodes. ~ Earl Warren

You cannot grant to universities the intellectual freedom that scholarship requires, it is argued, and also deny the moral freedom that enables students to adapt through their own "experiments in living." Freedom is indivisible, and without it knowledge cannot grow.
The problem with that argument is that, outside the natural sciences and a few solid humanities like philosophy and Egyptology, academic freedom is a thing of the past. What is expected of the student in many courses in the humanities and social sciences is ideological conformity, rather than critical appraisal, and censorship has become accepted as a legitimate part of the academic way of life. ~ Roger Scruton

Academic freedom really means freedom of inquiry. To be able to probe according to one's own interest, knowledge and conscience is the most important freedom the scholar has, and part of that process is to state its results. ~ Donald Kennedy

MIT is governed by a second, even higher rule: the inalienable right of academic freedom. ~ Nicholas Negroponte

By academic freedom I understand the right to search for truth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true. This right implies also a duty: one must not conceal any part of what on has recognized to be true. It is evident that any restriction on academic freedom acts in such a way as to hamper the dissemination of knowledge among the people and thereby impedes national judgment and action. ~ Albert Einstein

The phrase 'academic freedom' is often used carelessly: here is a work that will allow a more careful conversation about those many crucial issues facing the academy, in which a well-worked out understanding of conceptions of academic freedom is, as its authors show, an essential tool. ~ Kwame Anthony Appiah

I also believe that academic freedom should protect the right of a professor or student to advocate Marxism, socialism, communism, or any other minority viewpoint - no matter how distasteful to the majority, provided ... ~ Richard M. Nixon

Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

The principle of academic freedom is designed to make sure that powers outside the university, including government and corporations, are not able to control the curriculum or intervene in extra-mural speech. ~ Judith Butler

To give oneself the law is the highest freedom. The much-lauded 'academic freedom' will be expelled from the German university; for this freedom was not genuine because it was only negative. It primarily meant lack of concern, arbitrariness of intentions and inclinations, lack of restraint in what was done and left undone. The concept of the freedom of the German student is now brought back to its truth. Henceforth, the bond and service of German students will unfold from this truth. ~ Martin Heidegger

If fascism ever comes to America", Ronald Reagan told Mike Wallace in 1975, "it will come in the name of liberalism". Indeed, ideological fascism has come in place of academic freedom, waiving the banners of trigger warnings, microaggressions, and safe spaces on college campuses across the land. You must submit. You must agree. You must comply with the fasces--the acceptable bundle of ideas--or you will be silenced and expelled. ~ Everett Piper

The most important aspect of freedom of speech is freedom to learn. All education is a continuous dialogue - questions and answers that pursue every problem on the horizon. That is the essence of academic freedom. ~ William O. Douglas

There are, however, many challenges to Asian universities. First, academic freedom, in all senses, is much more critical to the success of a university than how much money is spent on infrastructure or on hiring big names. Faculty need to have the space to pursue the research that they are passionate about and the also need to have the freedom to express their opinions in the university, and in the society as a whole. ~ Henry Rosovsky

Academic freedom is being lost by a great many people who dare to challenge Darwinism. That's a terrifying situation. That's contrary to the principles of science. ~ Ben Stein

I think the impacts of 9/11 on academic freedom vary greatly depending on locale and time (softening with the passage of time), and even within the same community, and likely within the same schools. This variability makes it difficult to offer generalized responses without accompanying caveats. ~ Richard A. Falk

The problem with cosmetics exists only when women feel invisible or inadequate without them. The problem with working out exists only if women hate ourselves when we don't. When a woman is forced to adorn herself to buy a hearing, when she needs her grooming in order to protect her identity, when she goes hungry in order to keep her job, when she must attract a lover so that she can take care of her children, that is exactly what makes "beauty" hurt. Because what hurts women about the beauty myth is not adornment, or expressed sexuality, or time spent grooming, or the desire to attract a lover. Many mammals groom, and every culture uses adornment. "Natural" and "unnatural" are not the terms in question. The actual struggle is between pain and pleasure, freedom and compulsion. ~ Naomi Wolf

If you lack technique you lose the freedom to create. ~ Paco De Lucia

[A] great embarrassing fact ... haunts all attempts to represent the market as the highest form of human freedom: that historically, impersonal, commercial markets originate in theft. ~ David Graeber

Discipline and freedom are not mutually exclusive but mutually dependent because otherwise, you'd sink into chaos. ~ Paulo Coelho

Drink lots of water, and nap. I've made some really big messes along the way, whether on the academic side or on the media side. It hasn't been a straight path. But a lot of those mess-ups have led to opportunities, so I guess I'd say be fearless, and keep bottled water with you, so you don't dehydrate. ~ Melissa Harris-Perry

Encounters taking the form of challenge-and-response are the most illuminating kind of events a for student of human affairs if he believes, as I believe, that one of the most distinctive characteristics of Man is the he is partially free to make choices ... Encounters are the occasions in human life on which freedom and creativity come into play and on which new things are brought into existence. ~ Arnold Joseph Toynbee

The biology of emotional freedom depends on getting your endorphins flowing and turning off your stress hormones. How you achieve this? Laughter, exercise, meditation and doing anything that makes you loved. ~ Judith Orloff

Liberty is the right to choose. Freedom is the result of the right choice. ~ Jules Renard

We can be unhappy about many things, but jy can still be there ... It is important to become aware that at every moment of our life we have an opportunity to choose joy ... It is in the choice that our true freedom lies, and that freedom is, in the final analysis, the freedom to love. ~ Henri Nouwen

My first experiences of academic friendship made me smile in after years when I looked back on them. But my circle of acquaintances had gradually grown so large that it was only natural new friendships should grow out of it. ~ Georg Brandes

There is freedom waiting for you,
On the breezes of the sky,
And you ask "What if I fall?"
Oh but my darling,
What if you fly? ~ Erin Hanson

What matters Death, if Freedom be not dead?
No flags are fair, if Freedom's flag be furled.
Who fights for Freedom, goes with joyful tread
To meet the fires of Hell against him hurled. ~ Joyce Kilmer

While they suffered an irreparable loss, my children are still fortunate. Nothing will bring their father back, but our circumstances have softened the blow. This is not the case for many children facing heartbreaking difficulties. Two out of ten U.S. children of all backgrounds live in poverty, and one-third of black and close to one-third of Latino children are poor. Forty-three percent of children of single mothers live in poverty. More than two and a half million children have a parent in jail. Many children face serious illness, neglect, abuse, or homelessness. These extreme levels of harm and deprivation can impede children's intellectual, social, emotional, and academic development. We ~ Sheryl Sandberg

The cripple gave him a look. 'I remember that just yesterday you told me I was a cretin and a fool and a disgrace to the memory of my ancestors.'
'Academic hyperbole.' Morg dismissed the complaint with the wave of one hand.'It was merely enthusiastic encouragement, I assure you.'
'Perhaps overenthusiastic would be a more accurate description' muttered the cripple. ~ Karen Miller

He grew vexed and asked if poverty and hardships with freedom, were not preferable to our treatment in slavery ... No, I will not stay. Let them bring me back. We don't die but once. ~ Harriet Jacobs

It requires tremendous discipline to stay free ~ Srividya Srinivasan

Look, freedom is an overwhelming American notion. The idea that we want to see the world, the peoples of the world free is something that all of us subscribe to. ~ Joe Biden

Between stimulus and response is the freedom to choose. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

Leftism has influenced the literary, academic, media, and, therefore, the political elite far more than any other religion. It has taken over Western schools from elementary through graduate. ~ Dennis Prager

Academic training in beauty is a sham. We have been so deceived, but so well deceived that we can scarcely get back even a shadow of the truth. ~ Pablo Picasso

Money and a profession may buy you
freedom from attachments and the ability
to choose your own path, but it can never
buy you the deep relationships with God,
your spouse, or your children. ~ J.T. Cope IV

By realizing the reality of our Prince within us, we are never bothered again by the fact that we do not understand ourselves, or that other people do not understand us. The only One who truly understands me is the One who made me and who redeems me ... It is a tremendous freedom to get rid of every kind of self-consideration and learn to care about only one thing - the relationship between our Prince and ourselves. ~ Oswald Chambers

Nowhere else did repressions, purges, suppressions, and all other kinds of bureaucratic hooliganism in general acquire such horrifying scope as in Ukraine, in the struggle against powerful forces concealed in the Ukrainian masses that desired more freedom and independence. ~ Leon Trotsky

All despotism is bad; but the worst is that which works with the machinery of freedom. ~ Junius

If men were like ants, there would be no interest in human freedom. If individual men, like ants, were uniform, inter changeable, devoid of specific personality traits of their own, then who would care whether they were free or not? Who, indeed, would care if they lived or died? The glory of the human race is the uniqueness of each individual, the fact that every person, though similar in many ways to others, possesses a completely individuated personality of his own. It is the fact of each person's uniqueness - the fact that no two people can be wholly interchangeable - that makes each and every man irreplaceable and that makes us care whether he lives or dies, whether he is happy or oppressed. And, finally, it is the fact that these unique personalities need freedom for their full development that constitutes one of the major arguments for a free society. ~ Murray N. Rothbard

Individual freedom is a Jewish idea, but it's one of the functions of Christianity to make this idea universal. ~ Michael Novak

Shame always steals joy and limits freedom. Shame binds us in chains that feel unbreakable to realities that seem unchangeable. Jesus frees you in the Spirit of the Lord. ~ Heather Davis Nelson

I don't mean to defend zoos. Close them all down if you want (and let us hope that what wildlife remains can survive in what is left of the natural world). I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusion about freedom plague them both. ~ Yann Martel

Any nation allowing its people the right of freedom of speech is powerless to defend itself against enemies masquerading as patriotic; and seeking to obstruct, impede, break down, and destroy the proper functioning of its republican form of government under the guide of honest criticism ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

If happiness truly consisted in physical ease and freedom from care, then the happiest individual would not be either a man or a woman; it would be, I think, an American cow. ~ William Lyon Phelps

Nobody is in a position to decree what should make a fellow man happier. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life
happiness, freedom, and peace of mind
are always attained by giving them to someone else. ~ Peyton C. March

A fish is free as long as it stays in the water. If it suddenly declares that it wants its freedom to fly in the air like a bird, disaster occurs. A train is free as long as it stays on the track. However, if it demands freedom to take off down a major highway, the result is destruction and devastation. We too can only experience true freedom in its fullest if we remain within the framework of freedom. Often this requires accepting responsibility and practicing discipline. ~ Gigi Graham

You reclaim your power by loving what you were once taught to hate. ~ Bryant McGill

You know what happiness is: 'Having a little more money than your colleagues.' And that's not so tough in academic life. ~ Paul Samuelson