College isn’t the place to go for ideas.
—Helen Keller (1880–1968) American Author
I often think how much easier the world would have been to manage if Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini had been at Oxford.
—E. F. L. Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) British Politician, Political leader
College-bred is a four-year loaf, using dad’s dough, Coming out half-baked, with a lot of crust.
—Unknown
Oxford, the paradise of dead philosophies.
—George Santayana (1863–1952) Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher
I am told that today rather more than 60 per cent of the men who go to university go on a Government grant. This is a new class that has entered upon the scene. It is the white-collar proletariat. They do not go to university to acquire culture but to get a job, and when they have got one, scamp it. They have no manners and are woefully unable to deal with any social predicament. Their idea of a celebration is to go to a public house and drink six beers. They are mean, malicious and envious . They are scum.
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright
The medieval university looked backwards; it professed to be a storehouse of old knowledge. The modern university looks forward, and is a factory of new knowledge.
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95) English Biologist
The greatest gift that Oxford gives her sons is, I truly believe, a genial irreverence toward learning, and from that irreverence love may spring.
—Robertson Davies (1913–95) Canadian Novelist, Playwright, Essayist
The exquisite art of idleness, one of the most important things that any University can teach.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
It might be said now that I have the best of both worlds: a Harvard education and a Yale degree.
—John F. Kennedy (1917–63) American Head of State, Journalist
Scratch a Yale man with both hands and you’ll be lucky to find a coast-guard. Usually you find nothing at all.
—Unknown
I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all like an opera.
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) Irish Poet, Dramatist
One of the benefits of a college education is to show the boy its little avail.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
This place is the Devil, or at least his principal residence, they call it the University, but any other appellation would have suited it much better, for study is the last pursuit of the society; the Master eats, drinks, and sleeps, the Fellows drink, dispute and pun, the employments of the undergraduates you will probably conjecture without my description.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American Head of State, Political leader, Historian, Explorer
In spite of the roaring of the young lions at the Union, and the screaming of the rabbits in the home of the vivisect, in spite of Keble College, and the tramways, and the sporting prints, Oxford still remains the most beautiful thing in England, and nowhere else are life and art so exquisitely blended, so perfectly made one.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
They teach anything in universities today. You can major in mud pies.
—Orson Welles (1915–85) American Film Director, Actor
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
—John Ciardi (1916–86) American Poet, Teacher, Etymologist, Translator
I am willing to admit that some people might live there for years, or even a lifetime, so protected that they never sense the sweet stench of corruption that is all around them—the keen, thin scent of decay that pervades everything and accuses with a terrible accusation the superficial youthfulness, the abounding undergraduate noise, that fills those ancient buildings.
—Thomas Merton (1915–68) American Trappist Monk
I was a modest, good-humored boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.
—Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) British Essayist, Caricaturist, Novelist
‘Tis well enough for a servant to be bred at an University. But the education is a little too pedantic for a gentleman.
—William Congreve (1670–1729) English Playwright, Poet
Universities are of course hostile to geniuses, which, seeing and using ways of their own, discredit the routine: as churches and monasteries persecute youthful saints.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Looking back over a decade one sees the ideal of a university become a myth, a vision, a meadow lark among the smoke stacks. Yet perhaps it is there at Princeton, only more elusive than under the skies of the Prussian Rhineland or Oxfordshire; or perhaps some men come upon it suddenly and possess it, while others wander forever outside. Even these seek in vain through middle age for any corner of the republic that preserves so much of what is fair, gracious, charming and honorable in American life.
—Unknown
The men—the undergraduates of Yale and Princeton are cleaner, healthier, better-looking, better dressed, wealthier and more attractive than any undergraduate body in the country.
—Unknown
While formal schooling is an important advantage, it is not a guarantee of success nor is its absence a fatal handicap.
—Ray Kroc (1902–84) American Entrepreneur, Businessperson
Apparently, the most difficult feat for a Cambridge male is to accept a woman not merely as feeling, not merely as thinking, but as managing a complex, vital interweaving of both.
—Sylvia Plath (1932–63) American Poet, Novelist
If we help an educated man’s daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not about education but about war?—not how she can learn, but how she can fight in order that she might win the same advantages as her brothers?
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
They were evidently small men, all wind and quibbles, flinging out their chuffy grain to us with far less interest than a farm-wife feels as she scatters corn to her fowls.
—D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Essayist, Literary Critic
To be sure, nothing is more important to the integrity of the universities than a rigorously enforced divorce from war-oriented research and all connected enterprises.
—Hannah Arendt (1906–75) German-American Philosopher, Political Theorist
Master and Doctor are my titles; for ten years now, without repose, I held my erudite recitals and led my pupils by the nose.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
Remote and ineffectual don.
—Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) British Historian, Poet, Critic