Scholarship has the same relationship to wisdom as righteousness has to holiness: it is cold and dry, it is loveless and knows no ...deep feelings of inadequacy or longing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The ceaseless, senseless demand for original scholarship in a number of fields, where only erudition is now possible, has led eith...er to sheer irrelevancy, the famous knowing of more and more about less and less, or to the development of a pseudo- scholarship which actually destroys its object.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
By the worldly standards of public life, all scholars in their work are of course oddly virtuous. They do not make wild claims, th...ey do not cheat, they do not try to persuade at any cost, they appeal neither to prejudice nor to authority, they are often frank about their ignorance, their disputes are fairly decorous, they do not confuse what is being argued with race, politics, sex or age, they listen patiently to the young and to the old who both know everything. These are the general virtues of scholarship, and they are peculiarly the virtues of science.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The best hopes of any community rest upon that class of its gifted young men who are not encumbered with large possessions.... I n...ow speak of extensive scholarship and ripe culture in science and art.... It is not large possessions, it is large expectations, or rather large hopes, that stimulate the ambition of the young.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Whatever happens, every individual is a child of his time; so philosophy too is its own time apprehended in thoughts. It is just a...s absurd to fancy that a philosophy can transcend its contemporary world as it is to fancy that an individual can overleap his own age, jump over Rhodes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Perhaps a modern society can remain stable only by eliminating adolescence, by giving its young, from the age of ten, the skills, ...responsibilities, and rewards of grownups, and opportunities for action in all spheres of life. Adolescence should be a time of useful action, while book learning and scholarship should be a preoccupation of adults.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The notion that black folks have nothing to learn from scholarship that may reflect racial or racist biases is dangerous. It promo...tes closed-mindedness and a narrow understanding of knowledge to hold that "race" is such an overwhelming concept that it negates the validity of any insights contained in a work that may have some racist or sexist aspects.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Affirmative action was designed originally for "women and other minorities" but the phrase has become just another tortured euphem...ism. Female conscientiousness and eagerness to please have always made women good students and natural test takers. Jews have gloried in scholarship throughout the ages, and Asians of both sexes score so high on SATs and IQ tests that they regard affirmative action as an impediment. Affirmative action really means favoritism for blacks for the sake of racial peace, but the favor is pure chimera, and so, increasingly, is the peace.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Jargon is the verbal sleight of hand that makes the old hat seem newly fashionable; it gives an air of novelty and specious profun...dity to ideas that, if stated directly, would seem superficial, stale, frivolous, or false. The line between serious and spurious scholarship is an easy one to blur, with jargon on your side.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »