Professor Emeritus Quotes

Sara: As professor emeritus, you ought to know why it hurts. But you don't know.
Sara: You know so much, and you don't know anything. ~ Ingmar Bergman

PROFESSOR EMERITUS WOTAN Ulm, of the University of Oxford East 5, author of the bestselling if controversial memoir Peer Reviewers and Other Idiots: A Life In Academia, had consented to give a recorded lecture on von Neumann replicators to be carried as briefing material on the US Navy twain USS Brian Cowley. ~ Terry Pratchett

I have been a Professor Emeritus since 1958, and have continued my scientific studies. ~ Karl Von Frisch

I narrow my eyes at him. 'Don't try to take me on with sarcasm. I am the queen of it. I've studied it, perfected it. I come from a land where we own sarcasm and the use of it. There is nothing you can teach me about sarcasm.'

'OK,' he says, grinning up at me, 'Professor Emeritus Sarcastus. You can own the sarcasm. What I meant was you might learn how to change the chain on a bike, for example. ~ Sarah Alderson

Rod Cockshutt, Professor Emeritus at N.C. State University called my book, Evidence of Insanity, "an extraordinary achievement" and told me to not change the last 10-15 pages no matter what. ~ Carol Piner

I am what is called a professor emeritus - from the Latin e, 'out,' and meritus, 'so he ought to be. ~ Stephen Leacock

The mind becomes like that on which it feeds. ~ Elton Trueblood

I have no ideas, myself! Not a one! there's nothing more vulgar, more common, more disgusting than ideas! libraries are loaded with them! and every sidewalk cafe! ... the impotent are bloated with ideas! ... they dazzle youth with ideas! they play the pimp! ... and youth is ever ready, as you know, Professor, to gobble up anything, to go OOH! and AAH! by the numbers! How those pimps have an easy job of it! the passionate years of youth are spent getting a hard on and gargling ideeaas! ... philosophies, if you prefer! ... yes sir, philosophies! youth loves sham just as young dogs love those sticks, like bones, that we throw and they run after! they race forward, yipping away, wasting their time, that's the main thing! ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

Relatively, there are many scientists who believe in God. And in Oxford, where I am the Professor, there are more professors like me, who believe in God, than you think. There are not dozens of them, but they are there, and in Cambridge too, and elsewhere. We are not in a tiny minority. ~ John Lennox

I like the Stooges. You know what movie I saw that I sort of discovered late was Jerry Lewis in 'The Nutty Professor'. I really liked that. ~ Mike Judge

And suddenly...it made a kind of emotional sense that caused me to feel, instantly, how little sense my earlier...assumptions had made...And with that thought it was as though my father stepped forward to meet me as he had been in 1940: twenty-five years old, newly married, teaching literature and history and religion as his first real job, as an assistant professor at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota.

That stage of his life – and he in it – had always been indistinct to me, as the lives of parents before their children exist always are to those children; but now, holding this letter in my hands, I remembered anew and vividly the numerous photographs in our family albums of him then – a slender young man, intense-looking and handsome, with a shock of dark hair swept back from his high forehead. A radical young man, it would seem. More radical in many ways than my own son was now. A young man, ready, perhaps even eager to embrace the fate his powerful beliefs were calling him to. Sitting there, I felt a rush of love and pity for him in his youth, in his passionate convictions... ~ Sue Miller

Kids could and did swim in it happily as in their native element, at least until some teacher or professor told them they had to come out, dry off, and breathe modernism ever after. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Abbas is on his way to becoming a professor of terrorism. After denying the Holocaust in his doctoral thesis, he now claims that Hamas is not a terrorist organization. ~ Danny Danon

Looking ahead to future applications of electronics, [de Forest] grew even gloomier. He believed that 'electron physiologists' would eventually be able to monitor and analyze 'thought or brain waves', allowing 'joy and grief to be measured in define, quantitative unit.' Ultimately, he concluded, 'a professor may be able to implant knowledge into the reluctant brains of his 22nd century pupils. What terrifying political possibilities may be lurking there! Let us be thankful that such things are only for posterity, not for us. ~ Nicholas Carr

That is the first time I enjoy the privilege of having the upper hand with Professor Delacroix. And though I do not yet know it, it will also be the last. ~ Nenia Campbell

Professor Gruenfeld was able to explain the price women pay for success: "Our entrenched cultural ideas associate men with leadership qualities and women with nurturing qualities and put women in a double blind," she said. "We believe not only that women are nurturing, but that they *should* be nurturing above all else. When a woman does anything that signals she might not be nice first and foremost, it creates a negative impression and makes us uncomfortable. ~ Sheryl Sandberg

June 28, 1983 Mianus River Bridge Greenwich, Connecticut George Tesla was drunk. This wasn't new for him, but the reason was. He was going to be a father. Fifty years old, and he'd knocked up a thirty-year-old carnie. Someone careful enough to live through a trapeze act ought to be careful enough to not get pregnant. But she hadn't been. Tatiana flat-out refused to talk about abortion or adoption or any sensible solution to the problem. She was perfectly willing to talk about leaving him to raise the baby alone, but nothing else. Her mind was set. He leaned against the cold side of the bridge and took a long sip of Jack Daniel's from his silver hip flask. He'd bought the flask when he was first made professor of mathematics at New York University. Another thing that would have to change, since Tatiana had told him she had no intention of giving up performing to move to New York ~ Rebecca Cantrell

What do you have in mind after you graduate?"
What I always thought I had in mind was getting some big scholarship to graduate
school or a grant to study all over Europe, and then I thought I'd be a professor and write
books of poems or write books of poems and be an editor of some sort. Usually I had
these plans on the tip of my tongue.
"I don't really know," I heard myself say. I felt a deep shock, hearing myself say that, because the minute I said it, I knew it was true. ~ Sylvia Plath

There are so many dirty names for her that one rarely learns them all, even in one's native language. There are dirty names for every female part of her body and for every way of touching her. There are dirty words, dirty laughs, dirty noises, dirty jokes, dirty movies, and dirty things to do to her in the dark. Fucking her is the dirtiest, though it may not be as dirty as she herself is. Her genitals are dirty in the literal meaning: stink and blood and urine and mucous and slime. Her genitals are also dirty in the metaphoric sense: obscene. She is reviled as filthy, obscene, in religion, pornography, philosophy, and in most literature and art and psychology. where she is not maligned she is magnificently condescended to, as in this diary entry by Somerset Maugham written when he was in medical school:

The Professor of Gynaecology: He began his course of lectures as follows: Gentlemen, woman is an animal that micturates once a day, defecates once a week, menstruates once a month, parturates once a year and copulates whenever she has the opportunity.

I thought it a prettily-balanced sentence.

Were she loved sufficiently, or even enough, she could not be despised so much. were she sexually loved, or even liked, she and what is done with or to her, in the dark or in the light, she would not, could not, exist rooted in the realm of dirt, the contempt for her apparently absolute and irrevocable; horrible; immovable; help us, Lord; unjust. She is n ~ Andrea Dworkin

Trying to trace the consequences of time travel is like a monkey with no thumbs trying to reassemble an exploded bomb, at night, wearing clown gloves.
- Professor Charles Smart ~ Eoin Colfer

She marched toward the door, and as she did so she raised her wand. From the tip burst three silver cats with spectacle markings around their eyes. The Patronuses ran sleekly ahead, filling the spiral staircase with silvery light, as Professor McGonagall, Harry, and Luna hurried back down. ~ J.K. Rowling

Mr. Moony presents his compliments to Professor Snape, and begs him to keep his abnormally large nose out of other people's business.
Mr. Prongs agrees with Mr. Moony, and would like to add that Professor Snape is an ugly git.
Mr. Padfoot would like to register his astonishment that an idiot like that ever became a professor.
Mr. Wormtail bids Professor Snape good day, and advises him to wash his hair, the slimeball. ~ J.K. Rowling

I Preserve the nonviable embryo in formaldehyde for future study. Lord Maccon has been drinking my samples. When confronted, he admitted to be enjoying both the refreshing beverage and the 'crunchy pickled snack' as well. I was not pleased (Professor Lyall to Madame Lefoux) ~ Gail Carriger

And a ride in a hearse tells us we're all close to that final cruise ... when the body dies and we move on. It's just the body, man. It's just the body. The soul's already gone. So don't be afraid of a dead body absent a soul. It's empty, man. No resident. What you need to worry about is a living body that's lost its soul. Now that is scary, man. - Funk N. Wagnalls, owner of the Grim Reapers auto lot, a character in Professor Brown Shoes Teaches the Blues. ~ David Mutti Clark

I was recently providing music at a conference where one of the speakers, a noted professor of theology, remarked that we are in the "Experiential Age" of the Christian faith, an age that is defined by a professed personal relationship with Christ. Then she threw up her hands and said: "What does that mean? ~ Ashley Cleveland

By the seventh year of the Bush-Cheney presidency, Bush had attached signing statements to about 150 bills enacted since he took office, challenging the constitutionality of well over 1,100 separate sections in the legislation. By contrast, all previous presidents in American history combined had used signing statements to challenge the constitutionality of about 600 sections of bills, according to historical data compiled by Christopher Kelley, a Miami University of Ohio political science professor who was one of the first to study signing statements. ~ Charlie Savage

Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage ...
As chairman emeritus of the extreme right-wing National Organization for Marriage ~ Orson Scott Card

The celebrated Parisian doctor Professor Xavier Bichat developed a fully materialist theory of the human body and mind in his lectures Physiological Researches on Life and Death, translated into English in 1816. Bichat defined life bleakly as 'the sum of the functions by which death is resisted ~ Richard Holmes

I write by stealing time. The hours in the day have never felt as if they belonged to me. The greatest number has belonged to my day job as a physician and professor of medicine - eight to 12 hours, and even more in the early days. ~ Abraham Verghese

My mom is like this hard-core, liberal feminist. She's a professor in Boston, and she's been teaching women's studies for 30 years and international politics. ~ Eliza Dushku

Some students look at the problems that they're facing and they draw global conclusions from them. They say this is not just a professor giving me a bad grade or someone not sitting next to me in the cafeteria. This reflects that fact that I am not ready for college, or I shouldn't be in this college at all. ~ Shankar Vedantam

For I must not measure the speech of a statesman to his people by the impression which it leaves in a university professor, but by the effect it exerts on the people. And this alone gives the standard for the speaker's genius. ~ Adolf Hitler

In the shock of his loss, Tony Hastings knew the importance of remaining civilized, with a bomb behind his eyeballs that would blow up if he was not careful. The way was to defuse it with delicate ritual operations. The importance of remembering who we was, Tony Hastings, professor, resident of, son of, father of. Reciting his name as he walked along the road in the dark. Organizing words, constituting thought. Shaving carefully around his mustache. Preparing for what would be given him to feel. ~ Austin Wright

When I first arrived in Egypt many years ago, I looked at the tombs like a tourist. After being to them all so many times I was treated as a professor. Now when I go to look at a tomb they worry that I am thinking of moving in. ~ G.P. Warren

The most reliable predictor of whether students liked a course, it turned out, was their answer to the question 'Did the professor respect you? ~ Kwame Anthony Appiah

You have probably never heard of Professor Moriarty?" said he. "Never. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

In order to disprove the assertion that all crows are black, one white crow is sufficient. ~ William James

It seems only fair," Matthew continued. "A bit of karma, if you will." He twirled the stake again. "Shall we see how long you scream?"
"Are you ever going to shut up?" I snapped, fear and irritation filling me in equal measures. "This isn't your monologue, Hamlet. It's the battle scene, in case you've forgotten."
His eyes narrowed so fast they nearly sparked. They were the color of honey on fire. One of the others growled like an animal, low in his throat. It made all the hairs on my arms stand straight up.
I was going to die for making fun of Shakespeare.
My English Lit professor would be so proud. ~ Alyxandra Harvey

Ah, but surely you must now be saying, "waitaminute, tuna fish would go bad if you kept it in your pocket for weeks and weeks without refrigerating it."
To that I simply say: You obviously haven't read Professor P.S. Schackman's informative book How to Keep Tuna Fish in Your Pocket for Weeks and Weeks Without it Going Bad. I suggest you read it before complaining about the tuna situation again. ~ Jason Carter Eaton

Science probes; it does not prove. Imagine Newton's reaction to an objector of his law of gravity who argued that he could not establish a universal law because he had not observed every falling apple, much less proved the law of gravity - there might, after all, be an apple that levitates! Why should a group of simple, stable compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen struggle for billions of years to organize themselves into a professor of chemistry? ~ Robert M. Pirsig

Also Harry was in love. It would be a three-way wedding: him, the Time-Turner, and Professor Quirrell. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

The Professor shook his head. 'On the contrary, my motives are most simple, to advance science and to combat evil. ~ Robert Rankin

It was in a large window--a sort of hybrid between a shop and a private house--and consisted of a hand-written placard executed in bold Roman capitals announcing that these premises were occupied by no less a person than Professor Booley, late of Boston, U.S.A. (popularly believed to be the hub of the universe). ~ R. Austin Freeman

To a true-blue professor of literature in an American university, literature is not something that a plain human being, living today, painfully sits down to produce. No; it is something dead. ~ Sinclair Lewis

Like the college professor he was, Kittredge groped only for big words, and, finding no apt ones, he coined a lot of untranslatable new ones. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

The appearance of Professor Benjamin Peirce, whose long gray hair, straggling grizzled beard and unusually bright eyes sparkling under a soft felt hat, as he walked briskly but rather ungracefully across the college yard, fitted very well with the opinion current among us that we were looking upon a real live genius, who had a touch of the prophet in his make-up. ~ William Elwood Byerly

Until we have a firm understanding of the flow of time, or incontrovertible evidence that it is indeed an illusion, then we will not know who we are, or what part we are playing in the great cosmic drama." - Paul Davies, professor of theoretical physics and cosmology ~ Nina Nenova

I am not a conservative but I have spoken out for years against the staggering amount of blind hatred directed at black conservatives by liberals. Liberals are shockingly quick to demean and dismiss brilliant black people like Rice, Carson, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), Professor Walter E. Williams and economist Thomas Sowell because they don't fit into the role they have carved out for a black person in America. Black Americans must be obedient liberals on all things or risk being called a race traitor or an Uncle Tom. ~ Juan Williams