TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index A > Category: Academia

Academia Quotes (4 quotes)

First, the chief character, who is supposed to be a professional astronomer, spends his time fund raising and doing calculations at his desk, rather than observing the sky. Second, the driving force of a scientific project is institutional self-aggrandizement rather than intellectual curiosity.
[About the state of affairs in academia.]
In Marc J. Madou, Fundamentals of Microfabrication: the Science of Miniaturization (2nd ed., 2002), 535
Science quotes on:  |  Astronomer (97)  |  Calculation (134)  |  Character (259)  |  Chief (99)  |  Curiosity (138)  |  Desk (13)  |  Doing (277)  |  Drive (61)  |  Driving (28)  |  First (1302)  |  Force (497)  |  Fund (19)  |  Institution (73)  |  Institutional (3)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Observation (593)  |  Observe (179)  |  Professional (77)  |  Project (77)  |  Raise (38)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Second (66)  |  Self (268)  |  Sky (174)  |  Spend (97)  |  State (505)  |  State Of affairs (5)  |  Suppose (158)  |  Time (1911)

Question: Why are Professors like the Mafia?
Answer: Because they usually only kill their own.
Anonymous
As given in William Reville, 'The Science of Writing a Good Joke', The Irish Times (5 Jun 2000).
Science quotes on:  |  Answer (389)  |  Kill (100)  |  Professor (133)  |  Question (649)  |  Usually (176)  |  Why (491)

Until its results have gone through the painful process of publication, preferably in a refereed journal of high standards, scientific research is just play. Publication is an indispensable part of science. “Publish or perish” is not an indictment of the system of academia; it is a partial prescription for creativity and innovation. Sustained and substantial publication favors creativity. Novelty of conception has a large component of unpredictability. ... One is often a poor judge of the relative value of his own creative efforts. An artist’s ranking of his own works is rarely the same as that of critics or of history. Most scientists have had similar experiences. One’s supply of reprints for a pot-boiler is rapidly exhausted, while a major monograph that is one’s pride and joy goes unnoticed. The strategy of choice is to increase the odds favoring creativity by being productive.
In 'Scientific innovation and creativity: a zoologist’s point of view', American Zoologist (1982), 22, 233-234.
Science quotes on:  |  Artist (97)  |  Being (1276)  |  Choice (114)  |  Component (51)  |  Conception (160)  |  Creative (144)  |  Creativity (84)  |  Critic (21)  |  Effort (243)  |  Exhaust (22)  |  Experience (494)  |  Favor (69)  |  Favored (5)  |  High (370)  |  History (716)  |  Increase (225)  |  Indictment (2)  |  Indispensable (31)  |  Innovation (49)  |  Journal (31)  |  Joy (117)  |  Judge (114)  |  Large (398)  |  Major (88)  |  Monograph (5)  |  Most (1728)  |  Novelty (31)  |  Odds (6)  |  Often (109)  |  Painful (12)  |  Part (235)  |  Partial (10)  |  Perish (56)  |  Play (116)  |  Poor (139)  |  Preferably (2)  |  Prescription (18)  |  Pride (84)  |  Process (439)  |  Productive (37)  |  Publication (102)  |  Publish (42)  |  Rank (69)  |  Rapidly (67)  |  Rarely (21)  |  Referee (8)  |  Relative (42)  |  Research (753)  |  Result (700)  |  Same (166)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Similar (36)  |  Standard (64)  |  Strategy (13)  |  Substantial (24)  |  Supply (100)  |  Sustain (52)  |  System (545)  |  Through (846)  |  Unnoticed (5)  |  Unpredictability (7)  |  Value (393)  |  Work (1402)

Working on the final formulation of technological patents was a veritable blessing for me. It enforced many-sided thinking and also provided important stimuli to physical thought. Academia places a young person under a kind of compulsion to produce impressive quantities of scientific publications–a temptation to superficiality.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Bless (25)  |  Blessing (26)  |  Compulsion (19)  |  Enforce (11)  |  Final (121)  |  Formulation (37)  |  Important (229)  |  Impressive (27)  |  Kind (564)  |  Many-Sided (2)  |  Patent (34)  |  Person (366)  |  Physical (518)  |  Place (192)  |  Produce (117)  |  Provide (79)  |  Publication (102)  |  Quantity (136)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Stimulus (30)  |  Superficiality (4)  |  Technological (62)  |  Temptation (14)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Thought (995)  |  Veritable (5)  |  Work (1402)  |  Young (253)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.