Navigates University Quotes

So far as the mere imparting of information is concerned, no university has had any justification for existence since the popularization of printing in the fifteenth century. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

I spent some time at a university for traditional Chinese medicine. There's a resurgence of people eating according to traditional Chinese medicine. So our challenge is, How do you marry traditional Chinese medicine with PepsiCo's products? ~ Indra Nooyi

When girls were permitted to wear slacks to Creelman on Saturdays in 1963, it was headline news in the Ontarion. ~ James G. Snell

Sixty-three percent of our university students are female. But you still see violations of women's rights in Iran. A Muslim man can have up to four wives. He can divorce his wife without offering any reason, while it is quite difficult for a woman to get a divorce. ~ Shirin Ebadi

Columbus therefore cheated on his calculations, as the examining faculty of the University of Salamanca quite correctly pointed out. He used the smallest possible circumference of the Earth and the greatest eastward extension of Asia he could find in all the books available to him, and then exaggerated even those. Had the Americas not been in the way, Columbus' expeditions would have failed utterly. ~ Carl Sagan

I've never categorically been a banker. I had two internships while I was at university. The decision was more banking, or magic, and I went with the latter. ~ Drummond Money-Coutts

Next day I was closely questioned about the team and its members. The children were somewhat surprised to learn that some had been College or University men; their vision of the American Negro, being so largely based on films, did not include high intellectual attainment. However, through discussion, I believe that slowly they were beginning to see all mankind from a new standpoint of essential dignity. One ~ E.R. Braithwaite

Teach me, Beatrice. I'll enroll in your university as your student. Teach me how to care for you. ~ Sylvain Reynard

Teaching at university isn't like teaching in an art school. ~ Barbara Kruger

It was a roadblock, manned by an officer and several other soldiers.
Sivaram and the trishaw driver were ordered out of the vehicle, and I was
told to stay where I was. The soldiers held their rifl es aimed and ready as the
offi cer interrogated the trishaw driver, a Muslim man, who fumbled out his
documents. He was soon allowed to get back in his trishaw. When it was
Sivaram's turn, he just stood there, completely quiet. After several questions,
the offi cer started screaming at him. Then he ordered his soldiers to take him,
and gestured for the trishaw driver to go on. Without thinking, I jumped out
of the trishaw. I was a visiting professor at Colombo University and he was one
of my students, I lied, approaching them. I threatened to call the American
Embassy if they arrested my 'student.' The offi cer yelled, in English, for me to
come no closer, to get back in the trishaw. Then he barked an order, and one
of the soldiers lifted his rifl e and aimed it directly at my head. I kept babbling
on about the embassy, but even I did not hear myself. All I could see was that
hole at the end of the rifl e and, above it, the sweaty face and very frightened
eyes of the soldier. He looked very young, maybe 18. I thought, I'm going to
die right now. And then we grew very quiet.
The offi cer barked another order, the soldier lowered his gun, and the
other soldiers pushed Sivaram bac ~ Mark P. Whitaker

Long-time professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, Chris Alexander ~ Stewart Brand

She and Kennedy both dove for the power connector; Kennedy reached it first and yanked out the connection as Alex landed on her stomach beside it.

The air settled down until the fine hairs on her arm no longer stood on end. Alex dropped her forehead to the platform and started laughing. "Just like university, isn't it?"

"Almost - nothing's actually blown up yet. ~ G.S. Jennsen

You cannot make thousands of universities or hundreds of thousands of professors, but with technology and the Internet you can have great courses and make a digital university. ~ Carlos Slim

We do not believe in quotas. They would not only be undesirable, they would be illegal. There is legal protection for the autonomy of universities in running their own admission arrangements. ~ David Willetts

I live in Indiana and teach at Purdue University, a wonderful school with some of the brightest students I have ever had the privilege of working with. My colleagues are powerful and intelligent and kind. The cost of living is low, the prairie is wide, and on clear nights, I can see all the stars in the sky above. ~ Roxane Gay

For Jefferson, William and Mary was largely about what university life is supposed to be about: reading books, enjoying the company of like-minded, and savoring teachers who seemed to be ambassadors from other, richer, writer worlds. Jefferson believed Williamsburg the finest school of manners and morals that ever existed in America. ~ Jon Meacham

(...) How many ladies have there been, and still are, who deserve place among the learned; and who are more capable of teaching the sciences than those who now fill most of the university chairs? The age we live in has produced as many, as any heretofore (...) And as our sex, when it applies to learning, may be said at least to keep pace with the Men, so are they more to be esteem'd for their learning than the latter: Since they are under a necessity of surmounting the softness they were educated in (...) to which cruel custom seem'd to condemn them; to overcome the external impediments in their way to study; and to conquer the disadvantageous notions, which the vulgar of both sexes entertain of learning in Women. (...) it is self-evident, that many of our sex have far outstript the Men. Why then are we not as fit to learn and teach the sciences, at least to our own sex, as they fancy themselves to be? ~ Sophia Fermor

Four or five years - nothing at all. But no one over thirty could understand this peculiarly weighted and condensed time, from late teens to early twenties, a stretch of life that needed a name, from school leaver to salaried professional, with a university and affairs and death and choices in between. I had forgotten how recent my childhood was, how long and inescapable it once seemed. How grown up and how unchanged I was. ~ Ian McEwan

I'm not sure that finding a husband at university made me any less of a feminist or an academic. I still soaked up Susan Faludi; I still read Doris Lessing. But I did it at the same time I met someone who I felt was my soulmate. ~ Janine Di Giovanni

And that had a powerful appeal, particularly to those who had been denied the choice to stay on at school, to go to university, to be something else, other than going down the pit. ~ Barbara Castle

Modeling the evolution of modularity became significantly easier after a kind of genetic variation was discovered by quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping in the lab of James Cheverud at Washington University called 'relationship QTL' or r-QTL for short. An r-QTL is a genetic locus that affects the correlations between two quantitative traits (i.e. their variational relationship, and therefore, 'relationship' loci). Surprisingly, a large fraction of these so-mapped loci are also neutral with respect to the character mean. This means one can select on these 'neutral' r-QTLs without simultaneously changing the character mean in a certain way.
It was easy to show that differential directional selection on a character could easily lead a decrease in genetic correlation between characters. Of course, it is not guaranteed that each and every population has the right kind of r-QTL polymorphisms, nor is it yet clear what kind of genetic architecture allows for the existence of an r-QTL.
Nevertheless, these findings make it plausible that differential directional selection can enhance the genetic/variational individuality of traits and, thus, may play a role in the origin of evolutionary novelties by selecting for variational individuality.
It must be added, though, that there has been relatively little research in this area and that we will need to see more to determine whether we understand what is going on here, if anything. In particular, one difficulty is the math ~ Günter Wagner

The university grounds are really beautiful. Universities always try that bullshit. They want you to think wonderful things are going on inside of them because the grounds are beautiful. In general, it is good to be suspicious of monetary displays. Large swaths of bright green well-watered grass
a thing like that is a huge lie. ~ Jesse Ball

I think the poetry that came out of Belfast, and especially the Queen's University set, in the 1970s and '80s - you know, Paul Muldoon and Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon and Ciaran Carson - that was probably the finest body of work since the Gaelic renaissance, up there with the work of Yeats and Synge and Lady Gregory. ~ Adrian McKinty

I recently spoke at a university where a student told me it was such a shame that Nigerian men were physical abusers like the father character in my novel. I told him that I had recently read a novel called American Psycho,and that it was a shame that young Americans were serial murderers. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Bin Laden comes out of a business background - he studied public administration and economics at university, and he worked for his family company, which was obviously a rather successful enterprise. ~ Peter L. Bergen

In conjunction with his colleagues, Frantisek Baluska from the Institute of Cellular and Molecular Botany at the University of Bonn is of the opinion that brain-like structures can be found at root tips. In addition to signaling pathways, there are also numerous systems and molecules similar to those found in animals. When a root feels its way forward in the ground, it is aware of stimuli. The researchers measured electrical signals that led to changes in behavior after they were processed in a "transition zone." If the root encounters toxic substances, impenetrable stones, or saturated soil, it analyzes the situation and transmits the necessary adjustments to the growing tip. The root tip changes direction as a result of this communication and steers the growing root around the critical areas.

Right now, the majority of plant researchers are skeptical about whether such behavior points to a repository for intelligence, the faculty of memory, and emotions. Among other things, they get worked up about carrying over findings in similar situations with animals and, at the end of the day, about how this threatens to blur the boundary between plants and animals. And so what? What would be so awful about that? The distinction between plant and animal is, after all, arbitrary and depends on the way an organism feeds itself: the former photosynthesizes and the latter eats other living beings. Finally, the only other big difference is in the amount of time it takes to proce ~ Peter Wohlleben

When I first left university, I thought about going into the private sector. But I discovered when I went to interview that I could only have a career in the back office, or doing HR. The attitude was, 'My dear lady, you cannot possibly think about going on the board.' ~ Pauline Neville-Jones

In the late nineteenth century, many educated Indians were taught the same lesson by their British masters. One famous anecdote tells of an ambitious Indian who mastered the intricacies of the English language, took lessons in Western-style dance, and even became accustomed to eating with a knife and fork. Equipped with his new manners, he travelled to England, studied law at University College London, and became a qualified barrister. Yet this young man of law, bedecked in suit and tie, was thrown off a train in the British colony of South Africa for insisting on travelling first class instead of settling for third class, where 'coloured' men like him were supposed to ride. His name was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Here was a guy who had taken much of the Silicon Valley ethic behind moving quickly and running organizations free of bureaucratic hierarchies and applied it to improving big, fantastic machines and chasing things that had the potential to be real breakthroughs we'd been missing. ~ Ashlee Vance

If I didn't have a scholarship to go to the University of Florida or any school, I probably would have considered the military because my family could not afford to send me to college. ~ Emmitt Smith

Harvard Medical School, the University of South Florida and the American Psychiatric Association have all conducted studies showing that the earlier one begins gambling, the more likely it is he or she will become an addicted, problem gambler. ~ Spencer Bachus

Younger than Morini and Pelletier, Espinoza studied Spanish literature, not German literature, at least for the first two years of his university career, among other sad reasons because he dreamed of being a writer. ~ Roberto Bolano

Now, a recent study from cardiologists at the University of Maryland, has shown that laughter may have a beneficial effect on the heart. ~ Allen Klein

After qualifying for a B.Sc. in pharmacology, I spent a few months in Sheffield University as a research worker in the pharmacology department but then went back to Oxford to the Nuffield Institute for Medical Research in order to study for a D. Phil. with Dr. Geoffrey Dawes. ~ John Vane

If you teach three university courses a day, you need something to turn your mind off. ~ Coleman Barks

March 6, 1961

I remembered a party in a house outside of Ann Arbor. There was a jazz band -- piano, bass, drums, and sax -- playing in one of the large rooms. A heavy odor of marijuana hung in the air. The host appeared now and then looking pleased, as if he liked seeing strangers in every room, the party out of his control. It wasn't wild, but with a constant flow of people, who knows what they're doing. It became late and I was a little drunk, wandering from one part of the house to another. I entered a long hall and was surprised by the silence, as if I had entered another house. A girl at the other end of the hall was walking toward me. I saw large blue eyes and very black hair. She was about average height, doll-like features delicate as cut glass, extremely pretty, maybe the prettiest girl I'd ever seen. When she came up to me I took her in my arms and kissed her. She let it happen. We were like creatures in a dream. Holding her hand, I drew her with me and we passed through rooms where people stood about, and then left the house. As we drove away, she said her name was Margo. She was a freshman at the university, from a town in northern Michigan. I took her home. It was obvious she'd never gone home with a man. She didn't seem fearful, only uncertain, the question in her eyes: "What happens next?" What happened next was nothing much. We fell asleep in our clothes. I wasn't the one to make her no different from everyone. ~ Leonard Michaels

I can remember one occasion, taking a shower with my wife while high, in which I had an idea on the origins and invalidities of racism in terms of Gaussian distribution curves. It was a point obvious in a way, but rarely talked about. I drew curves in soap on the shower wall, and went to write the idea down. One idea led to another, and at the end of about an hour of extremely hard work I had found I had written eleven short essays on a wide range of social, political, philosophical, and human biological topics. . . . I have used them in university commencement addresses, public lectures, and in my books. ~ Carl Sagan

University students are rarely able to cope with universals and death is the most embarrassing universal. ~ Kate Cruise O'Brien

The value of a dollar is to buy just things; a dollar goes on increasing in value with all the genius and all the virtue of the world. A dollar in a university is worth more than a dollar in a jail; in a temperate, schooled, law-abiding community than in some sink of crime, where dice, knives, and arsenic are in constant play. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson