Top 100 Professors Quotes

You can learn from everyone, the president or the cleaner. You need teachers in life, but they’re not always school teachers or professors. You learn from ordinary people. You learn from travel, from just walking down the street.

Stoicism – and philosophy – are not the domains of idle professors. They are the succor of the successful and the men and women of action.

I travelled round the world giving demonstrations of my talents. In every country, I performed for students, professors, teachers, bankers, accountants, and even laymen who knew very little, or nothing at all, about mathematics.

My history is pretty different from the history of most professors. I was a high school dropout. I dropped out and became a science fiction writer.

Harvard prides itself on its diversity – economic, racial, social, geographical – but it remains intellectually segregated. It’s not what conservative commentators seem to imagine – a bastion of liberal professors force-feeding radical opinions to a naive student body.

Professors of classics – not even a professor of English – professors of classics, they’re something sacred; it’s almost like being a priest.

Business school professors don’t take selling seriously because they don’t know how to sell. It’s easy to talk about business theory and production time and just-in-time development. Selling is much more difficult.

The Indian diaspora is not a capital-accumulating diaspora. The Indian diaspora is doctors, lawyers, professors. Or newspaper sellers. They are basically trade- or profession-oriented, and so they’re not major investors in their home country.

It’s funny, because when I was in college, all my professors said, ‘You should do comedy.’ And I was like, ‘No! No!’ But I was able to get my foot in the door through comedy. I’m so grateful to have the opportunity to do it.

Ideally, I’d love to write poems that intrigued humans across the board: literary folk and academics as well as… dog-walkers, doctors, plumbers, chefs, math professors, jugglers, etc.

My mother wanted me to be a professor, because I have several people in my family who are professors at university.

There’s a real difference of what one believed was one’s chief responsibility between American professors and Chinese professors. This was vividly revealed to me when I compared what I could learn in Chicago and what I could learn in China.

I liked Columbia, but it was like high school in that there was this big social world that I was not part of. I existed on the side, far away. That might be temperamental, my own fear of large groups, more than anything else. But I had a handful of professors who meant a lot to me.

Productivity is going to be a critical issue. And it’s not just about getting more time for professors in the classroom. It involves reexamining the learning experience and restructuring faculty and the use of faculty time.

My parents were born into a secular country. They met in Turkey’s top medical school, moved to America in the nineteen-seventies, and became researchers and professors.

Some of the perceptions from my professors were that I was less than or that I wouldn’t be able to compete or wouldn’t be able to meet the same bar as my peers. I don’t want that for my daughter or for any of the girls who come into our program.

Even being too good at teaching is risky at research universities; the joke is that a ‘teacher of the year’ award is the kiss of death for non-tenured professors.

I despise the phony, fancy-pants rhetoric of professors aping jargon-filled European locutions – which have blighted academic film criticism for over 30 years.

I try not to deal with people’s hostility, though I must if they have something I need from them, as the professors did at Columbia or my landlord did.

When we go out to the university, the professors always say, ‘Tell these students about your five-year plan and your 10-year plan,’ and I say, ‘Gee, we’re lucky if we have a year plan.’

My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my ‘blackness’ than ever before. I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don’t belong.

Having studied at the Sorbonne, I spent my 21st birthday in Paris and celebrated with one of my professors in a cafe outside of Notre Dame.

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.

In law school, I earned the respect of professors and served on the editorial board of ‘The Yale Law Journal.’

In an increasingly complex world, with courseloads becoming heavier and heavier, shouldn’t we be opting for more accountability when it comes to our professors, not less?

When I earned my diploma from the University of Virginia in the spring of 2000, it never occurred to me before my senior year to worry too seriously about my post-graduation prospects. Indeed, most of my professors, advisors, and mentors reinforced this complacency.

The university is in danger of losing its monopoly, and for good reason. The most visible threat are the new online courses, many of them free, with some of the best professors in their respective fields.

At 16, when I was at Henry M. Gunn High School, I had a crush on the English teacher, and my grades improved dramatically. This great school had only 400 students, mostly children of Stanford professors, and it was more usual to have classes under one of the oak trees dotted around the campus than in the classroom.

Being no bigot myself to any mode of worship, I am disposed to endulge the professors of Christianity in the church, that road to heaven which to them shall seem the most direct plainest easiest and least liable to exception.

I had an excellent math and physics teacher in high school named T.C. Patel, and in the university, I had truly dedicated professors in both physics and mathematics who gave me a sound foundation with which to pursue graduate studies.

One thing that used to worry me is the fact that it seemed like Harvard was this big scary thing where I would have to spend all my time studying just to get in. But getting to go to both campuses of Harvard and Oxford and getting to meet some of the professors was absolutely amazing.

When I became a professor of physics circa 1991, I doubled the number of female professors of physics in the U.K.

In film schools of the future, professors will teach ‘Tammy’ as an object lesson in Making Everything Go Wrong.

College professors used to be badly paid and worth it. Colleges used to be modest institutions; they should go back to being modest institutions.

I write to be read. I’m quite direct about that. I’m not writing to thrill colleagues or to impress the professors at the University of Iowa; that’s not my goal.

A good traditional conceptual instruction is what I got from my better professors at MIT. They would be at a chalkboard, and they would literally be explaining something and working through a problem, but it wasn’t rote. They were explaining the underlying theory and processes and intuition behind it.

When I was studying in JNU, I realised how students and professors address each other as comrades.

The resources at Harvard – its professors, our fellow students, the libraries, its alumni – created for me the opportunity to pursue my passions in finance.

Individuals whose asylum claims have been accepted have gone on to become professors, soldiers in our military, artists, and more.

I’m indebted to the teachers who shaped me – from the Sisters of St. Joseph at St. Croix Catholic elementary to the monks of St. John’s in Minnesota to my professors at Georgetown.

Preparing America’s student loan crippled grads to enter a hopeless and crowded job market is no easy task, which is why we should show more love to our nation’s professors.

Like all professors, I also do a lot of extra jobs for which I was never trained, such as advising former students as they navigate the wider world.

Although I loved working on technology – I’ve always been a computer geek at heart – my professors encouraged me to get a real-world job working with customers.

I do think there’s not enough film history being taught and appreciated. Maybe it’s being taught, but I’ve heard from professors that young kids don’t want to look at black-and-white movies. And that’s 85 years of film history, with masterpiece after masterpiece.

Professors simply can’t discuss a thing. Habit compels them to deliver a lecture.

I studied English at Princeton in the early eighties in what I consider a period of high obscurity. Professors and students ran around discussing the work of critics and philosophers that I doubt they’d read or understood.

Have you ever heard of the book ‘Freakonomics?’ So there’s these two economics professors, and they’re really interesting guys, and they wrote these books. And it’s really all about sort of false thinking. They try to go in and look at a number of different phenomenon.

As the existence of a corps of professors of mathematics is peculiar to our navy, as well as an apparent, perhaps a real, anomaly, some account of it may be of interest.

Too often, teachers and professors misrepresent conservative viewpoints, and intentionally muddle what it means to be a conservative.

I was genuinely lucky to have the professors I did, many of whom took a very humanist approach in teaching history that went beyond memorizing dates and battles and all of that – basically, looking at the life of individuals throughout history, aided by fascinating primary sources.

We have associations to things. We have, you know, we have associations to tables and to – and to dogs and to cats and to Harvard professors, and that’s the way the mind works. It’s an association machine.

Historically, professors have defended tenure as a way to protect their individualistic thought. But tenure can also be used as a club to wield against the powerless.

Don’t feel embarrassed if you’ve never heard of William Lane Craig. He parades himself as a philosopher, but none of the professors of philosophy whom I consulted had heard his name, either.

I did a four-year degree in five years. I have awesome support from my team and my professors. Everyone’s super on board and that makes my life a bit easier.

I feel I learned as much from fellow students as from the professors.

Parents, teachers, professors, economists, pundits, entrepreneurs, tinkerers and misfits all have to do a better job of unapologetically singing the praises of capitalism and free markets which unequivocally demonstrate the ability to pull people out of poverty and improve and lengthen their lives.

The most frequent complaint I hear from college students is that professors inject their leftist political comments into their courses even when they have nothing to do with the subject.

We can trust our doctors to be professional, to minister equally to their patients without regard to their political or religious beliefs. But we can no longer trust our professors to do the same.

Basketball’s eras are defined by teams – Celtics, Lakers, Bulls – and baseball’s epochs are defined by players – Ruth, Robinson, Mantle – but with football, it’s the sideline strategists, the nutty professors and top coated Lears.

All of us, whether we are ignorant of philosophy or professors of philosophy, find it easier to follow dogma than to think.

Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.

I was taught by professors who had done their schooling in the 1930s. Most of them were scornful of, even hated, big business.

After years of studying French in school, one of my professors said he’d really appreciate it if I didn’t take any more French.

Opposite to godliness is atheism in profession, and idolatry in practice. Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind, that it never had many professors.

I went to the University of San Francisco on an athletic scholarship. I didn’t study in high school. I was just there to get by and to play basketball. But a funny thing happened to me when I got to college. I got challenged by the work and the professors.

I went to a British Council event a while back and there were lots of German professors of literature. About half of them were convinced I had a German sense of humour and the other half were sure it was British. They are probably still arguing about it now.

Law professors like Obama tend to view the law as one means to an end, and others, like myself, tend to view it as the end itself.

I live in a country where music has very little success, though, exclusive of those who have forsaken us, we have still admirable professors and, more particularly, composers of great solidity, knowledge, and taste.

I was making big paintings with mythological themes. When I started painting black figures, the white professors were relieved, and the black students were like, ‘She’s on our side.’ These are the kinds of issues that a white male artist just doesn’t have to deal with.

Many professors tell you that you’d be good at this or that, but they don’t always help you with that career path.

Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers.

I’m extremely excited about returning to my alma mater, working with my amazing professors and being part of Muhlenberg Theatre & Dance once again. I believe the program to be the absolute best in the nation!

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.

My parents are professors; they’re intellectual. I spent a lot of time reading books. To me, everyone always looks like they do in your imagination. And in my imagination, the characters always looked like me.

As a physics major at Yale in the 1970s, I developed crushes on nearly all my male professors.

You should allow professors to become really outstanding academicians, recognised worldwide, and you should reward them.

If God had meant Harvard professors to appear in People magazine, She wouldn’t have invented The New York Review of Books.

At Harvard, I got to meet and have dinner with Jamaica Kincaid. Just to have conversations with professors was absolutely amazing.

Rarest of the real poets are born poets. They are the oddballs, not the professors.

Indian-Americans are physicians, engineers, CEOs, professors, teachers, entrepreneurs. They are a vital part of the United States’ economic and social fabric. Because of this long history, the bonds among our people and our cultures will remain strong.

There is no greater way to ensure that universities remain a hotbed of leftist thought than to guarantee that professors knight their own successors. But that’s basically how the Ph.D. system works, with sitting professors approving the work of would-be professors.

I have known people who are working class or craftsmen, who happen to be more intellectual than professors.

Princeton is quite integrated. Women are professors at Princeton. Women are students at Princeton. That began in the 1970s.

Our teachers made such a difference – all my teachers and professors were very supportive and nurturing.

A growing and increasingly influential movement of philosophers, ethicists, law professors and activists are convinced that the great moral struggle of our time will be for the rights of animals.

Even from the very beginning, the type of fans the Ramones generated were the kind of people who wound up running industry, who became professors and scientists. Our staunchest fans were always a little bit more on the outside, the type of people who didn’t fit in with society.

Working with Adrien Brody was like going to Julliard, but instead of four years, I went for four weeks. He was like the Albert Einstein of professors, it was just the best experience of my life. Adrien was the most influential mentor in my acting career thus far, and even after the movie he continues to mentor me.

In order to produce generalist courses, business school professors have been forced to invent subjects called strategy, called organizational behavior and so on.

With my early work I got eviscerated by my male professors, and so you learned to disguise your impulses, as many women have done. And that’s definitely changed.

In college, I was always disappointed by lectures that covered social problems but failed to identify what I could do to change them. Part of the problem was that many professors simply didn’t believe they had a role in converting awareness to action.

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.

I respect teachers and professors.

I have wanted to be a fine artist painter, and I reached the point in art schools were I’d like to understand more about images and how images communicate information to people. And I was not getting very far in that from my professors.

Research professors don’t watch a whole lot of TV.

In an undergraduate business environment, the best learning experience is the interaction students have with each other. They need to learn from each other as much as from professors and lectures and other teaching tools.

I’m not one of those professors whose office is encased floor-to-ceiling with books. By the way, I think academics do this to intimidate their visitors.

Colleges would compete by adding professors, enhancing programmes or building nicer facilities. So they competed by making institutions better.

It took me forever to leave Chicago. I went to Columbia College because I wasn’t ready to leave! My professors had to kick me in the pants to move to Los Angeles.

The lopsided attitudes of college professors pose a serious challenge to learning because students are so susceptible to becoming lopsided sheep.

My grandfather would live to see his children become doctors and ministers, accounts and professors.