#academia

Postmodernism is an academic theory, originating in academia with an academic elite, not in the world of women and men, where feminist theory is rooted. ↗

— Catharine MacKinnon

#academic #elite #feminist #men #originating

What do you call a co-worker these days? Neither teammate nor confederate will do, and partner is too legalistic. The answer brought from academia to the political world by Henry Kissinger and now bandied in the boardroom is colleague. It has a nice upper-egalitarian feel, related to the good fellowship of collegial. ↗

— William Safire

#answer #bandied #brought #call #colleague

Professor: A mind not broad enough to encompass its specific sub-discipline, so it loses itself within its position instead. If nothing else, others will be made to grasp the meaning of 'Emeritus' – through its effects if not its etymology. ↗

— Bauvard

#funny #humor #professor #funny

I attended a symposium, an event named after a fifth century (B.C.) Athenian drinking party in which nonnerds talked about love; alas, there was no drinking, and mercifully, nobody talked about love. ↗

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#autism #modernity #nerd #nerdiness #nerds

Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwhile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#exams #sobriety #career

Self-actualization is what educated existence is all about. For members of the educated class, life is one long graduate school. When they die, God meets them at the gates of heaven, totes up how many fields of self-expression they have mastered, and then hands them a divine diploma and lets them in. ↗

— David Brooks

#graduate-school #intellectualism #meritocracy #self-actualization #upper-class

One entered the world, Denis pursued, having ready-made ideas about everything. One had a philosophy and tried to make life fit into it. One should have lived first and then made one's philosophy to fit life...Life, facts, things were horribly complicated; ideas, even the most difficult of them, deceptively simple. In the world of ideas, everything was clear; in life all was obscure, embroiled. Was it surprising that one was miserable, horribly unhappy? ↗

— Aldous Huxley

#education #ideas #intellectualism #life #philosophy

The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore, so it eats it! It's rather like getting tenure. ↗

— Daniel C. Dennett

#tenure #life

To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can descend in work or life. (Letter to Muriel St. Clare Byrne, 8 September 1935) ↗

— Dorothy L. Sayers

#artists #falsification #gain #greed #honesty

There are times when wisdom cannot be found in the chambers of parliament or the halls of academia but at the unpretentious setting of the kitchen table. ↗

— E.A. Bucchianeri

#humility #kitchen #kitchen-table #parliament #philosophical