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A book is the work of a mind, doing its work in the way that a mind deems
2
best.  That's dangerous.  Is the work of some mere individual mind likely to
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serve the aims of collectively accepted compromises, which are known in the
4
schools as 'standards'?  Any mind that would audaciously put itself forth to
5
work all alone is surely a bad example for the students, and probably, if
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not downright antisocial, at least a little off-center, self-indulgent,
7
elitist.  ... It's just good pedagogy, therefore, to stay away from such
8
stuff, and use instead, if film-strips and rap-sessions must be
9
supplemented, 'texts,' selected, or prepared, or adapted, by real
10
professionals.  Those texts are called 'reading material.'  They are the
11
academic equivalent of the 'listening material' that fills waiting-rooms,
12
and the 'eating material' that you can buy in thousands of convenient eating
13
resource centers along the roads.
14
		-- The Underground Grammarian
15
%
16
A definition of teaching: casting fake pearls before real swine.
17
		-- Bill Cain, "Stand Up Tragedy"
18
%
19
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and
20
art into pedantry.  Hence University education.
21
		-- G. B. Shaw
22
%
23
A good question is never answered.  It is not a bolt to be tightened
24
into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the
25
hope of greening the landscape of idea.
26
		-- John Ciardi
27
%
28
A grammarian's life is always in tense.
29
%
30
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely
31
rearranging their prejudices.
32
		-- William James
33
%
34
A mother mouse was taking her large brood for a stroll across the kitchen
35
floor one day when the local cat, by a feat of stealth unusual even for
36
its species, managed to trap them in a corner.  The children cowered,
37
terrified by this fearsome beast, plaintively crying, "Help, Mother!
38
Save us!  Save us!  We're scared, Mother!"
39
	Mother Mouse, with the hopeless valor of a parent protecting its
40
children, turned with her teeth bared to the cat, towering huge above them,
41
and suddenly began to bark in a fashion that would have done any Doberman
42
proud.  The startled cat fled in fear for its life.
43
	As her grateful offspring flocked around her shouting "Oh, Mother,
44
you saved us!" and "Yay!  You scared the cat away!" she turned to them
45
purposefully and declared, "You see how useful it is to know a second
46
language?"
47
%
48
A Parable of Modern Research:
49
 
50
	Bob has lost his keys in a room which is dark except for one
51
brightly lit corner.
52
	"Why are you looking under the light, you lost them in the dark!"
53
	"I can only see here."
54
%
55
A pencil with no point needs no eraser.
56
%
57
	 A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
58
			  by Mark Twain
59
 
60
	For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped
61
to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer
62
be part of the alphabet.  The only kase in which "c" would be retained
63
would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later.  Year 2
64
might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the
65
same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with
66
"i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
67
	Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear
68
with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12
69
or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
70
Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi
71
ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz
72
ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
73
	Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud
74
hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
75
%
76
A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
77
%
78
	A reader reports that when the patient died, the attending doctor
79
recorded the following on the patient's chart:  "Patient failed to fulfill
80
his wellness potential."
81
	Another doctor reports that in a recent issue of the *American Journal
82
of Family Practice* fleas were called "hematophagous arthropod vectors."
83
	A reader reports that the Army calls them "vertically deployed anti-
84
personnel devices."  You probably call them bombs.
85
	At McClellan Air Force base in Sacramento, California, civilian
86
mechanics were placed on "non-duty, non-pay status."  That is, they were fired.
87
	After taking the trip of a lifetime, our reader sent his twelve rolls
88
of film to Kodak for developing (or "processing," as Kodak likes to call it)
89
only to receive the following notice:  "We must report that during the handling
90
of your twelve 35mm Kodachrome slide orders, the films were involved in an
91
unusual laboratory experience."  The use of the passive is a particularly nice
92
touch, don't you think?  Nobody did anything to the films; they just had a bad
93
experience.  Of course our reader can always go back to Tibet and take his 
94
pictures all over again, using the twelve replacement rolls Kodak so generously
95
sent him.
96
		-- Quarterly Review of Doublespeak (NCTE)
97
%
98
A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an exam.
99
%
100
A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first
101
thought of.
102
		-- Burt Bacharach
103
%
104
A tautology is a thing which is tautological.
105
%
106
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest
107
in students.
108
		-- John Ciardi
109
%
110
"A University without students is like an ointment without a fly."
111
	-- Ed Nather, professor of astronomy at UT Austin
112
%
113
About all some men accomplish in life is to send a son to Harvard.
114
%
115
Abstract:
116
	This study examined the incidence of neckwear tightness among a group
117
of 94 white-collar working men and the effect of a tight business-shirt collar
118
and tie on the visual performance of 22 male subjects.  Of the white-collar
119
men measured, 67% were found to be wearing neckwear that was tighter than
120
their neck circumference.  The visual discrimination of the 22 subjects was
121
evaluated using a critical flicker frequency (CFF) test.  Results of the CFF
122
test indicated that tight neckwear significantly decreased the visual
123
performance of the subjects and that visual performance did not improve
124
immediately when tight neckwear was removed.
125
		-- Langan, L.M. and Watkins, S.M. "Pressure of Menswear on the
126
		   Neck in Relation to Visual Performance."  Human Factors 29,
127
		   #1 (Feb. 1987), pp. 67-71.
128
%
129
Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics,
130
because the stakes are so low.
131
		-- Wallace Sayre
132
%
133
Academicians care, that's who.
134
%
135
=============== ALL FRESHMEN PLEASE NOTE ===============
136
 
137
To minimize scheduling confusion, please realize that if you are taking one
138
course which is offered at only one time on a given day, and another which is
139
offered at all times on that day, the second class will be arranged as to 
140
afford maximum inconvenience to the student.  For example, if you happen
141
to work on campus, you will have 1-2 hours between classes.  If you commute,
142
there will be a minimum of 6 hours between the two classes.
143
%
144
An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
145
		-- Benjamin Franklin
146
%
147
Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.
148
		-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
149
%
150
As Gen. de Gaulle occassionally acknowledges America to be the daughter
151
of Europe, so I am pleased to come to Yale, the daughter of Harvard.
152
		-- J.F. Kennedy
153
%
154
As long as the answer is right, who cares if the question is wrong?
155
%
156
Briefly stated, the findings are that when presented with an array of
157
data or a sequence of events in which they are instructed to discover
158
an underlying order, subjects show strong tendencies to perceive order
159
and causality in random arrays, to perceive a pattern or correlation
160
which seems a priori intuitively correct even when the actual correlation
161
in the data is counterintuitive, to jump to conclusions about the correct
162
hypothesis, to seek and to use only positive or confirmatory evidence, to
163
construe evidence liberally as confirmatory, to fail to generate or to
164
assess alternative hypotheses, and having thus managed to expose themselves
165
only to confirmatory instances, to be fallaciously confident of the validity
166
of their judgments (Jahoda, 1969; Einhorn and Hogarth, 1978).  In the
167
analyzing of past events, these tendencies are exacerbated by failure to
168
appreciate the pitfalls of post hoc analyses.
169
		-- A. Benjamin
170
%
171
British education is probably the best in the world, if you can survive
172
it.  If you can't there is nothing left for you but the diplomatic corps.
173
		-- Peter Ustinov
174
%
175
... But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand.  Human
176
intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as
177
we can tell.  If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues
178
that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding
179
of their world, not in their distorted perceptions.  Even the standard
180
example of ancient nonsense -- the debate about angels on pinheads --
181
makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing
182
whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a
183
finite or an infinite number.
184
		-- S. J. Gould, "Wide Hats and Narrow Minds"
185
%
186
Campus sidewalks never exist as the straightest line between two points.
187
		-- M. M. Johnston
188
%
189
Comparing information and knowledge is like asking whether the fatness
190
of a pig is more or less green than the designated hitter rule."
191
		-- David Guaspari
192
%
193
Dear Freshman,
194
	You don't know who I am and frankly shouldn't care, but
195
unknown to you we have something in common.  We are both rather
196
prone to mistakes.  I was elected Student Government President by
197
mistake, and you came to school here by mistake.
198
%
199
Dear Miss Manners:
200
	My home economics teacher says that one must never place one's
201
elbows on the table.  However, I have read that one elbow, in between
202
courses, is all right.  Which is correct?
203
 
204
Gentle Reader:
205
	For the purpose of answering examinations in your home economics
206
class, your teacher is correct.  Catching on to this principle of
207
education may be of even greater importance to you now than learning
208
correct current table manners, vital as Miss Manners believes that is.
209
%
210
Department chairmen never die, they just lose their faculties.
211
%
212
Did you know the University of Iowa closed down after someone stole the book?
213
%
214
Do not clog intellect's sluices with bits of knowledge of questionable uses.
215
%
216
Do you know the difference between education and experience?  Education
217
is what you get when you read the fine print; experience is what you get
218
when you don't.
219
		-- Pete Seeger
220
%
221
Do you think that illiterate people get the full effect of alphabet soup?
222
%
223
Education and religion are two things not regulated by supply and
224
demand.  The less of either the people have, the less they want.
225
		-- Charlotte Observer, 1897
226
%
227
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to
228
time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
229
		-- Oscar Wilde, "The Critic as Artist"
230
%
231
Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know.
232
		-- Daniel J. Boorstin
233
%
234
Education is the process of casting false pearls before real swine.
235
		-- Irwin Edman
236
%
237
Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten.
238
		-- B.F. Skinner
239
%
240
Educational television should be absolutely forbidden.  It can only lead
241
to unreasonable disappointment when your child discovers that the letters
242
of the alphabet do not leap up out of books and dance around with
243
royal-blue chickens.
244
		-- Fran Lebowitz, "Social Studies"
245
%
246
Eloquence is logic on fire.
247
%
248
Encyclopedia for sale by father.  Son knows everything.
249
%
250
Engineering:    "How will this work?"
251
Science:        "Why will this work?"
252
Management:     "When will this work?"
253
Liberal Arts:   "Do you want fries with that?"
254
%
255
Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak
256
it to?
257
		-- Clarence Darrow
258
%
259
Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers.  My
260
opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.  There's many a bestseller
261
that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
262
		-- Flannery O'Connor
263
%
264
Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for
265
even the greatest fool may ask more the the wisest man can answer.
266
		-- C.C. Colton
267
%
268
Experience is the worst teacher.  It always gives the test first and
269
the instruction afterward.
270
%
271
F u cn rd ths u cnt spl wrth a dm!
272
%
273
f u cn rd ths, itn tyg h myxbl cd.
274
%
275
f u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgrmmng.
276
%
277
f u cn rd ths, u r prbbly a lsy spllr.
278
%
279
Fortune's Guide to Freshman Notetaking:
280
 
281
WHEN THE PROFESSOR SAYS:			YOU WRITE:
282
 
283
Probably the greatest quality of the poetry	John Milton -- born 1608
284
of John Milton, who was born in 1608, is the
285
combination of beauty and power.  Few have
286
excelled him in the use of the English language,
287
or for that matter, in lucidity of verse form,
288
'Paradise Lost' being said to be the greatest
289
single poem ever written."
290
 
291
Current historians have come to			Most of the problems that now
292
doubt the complete advantageousness		face the United States are
293
of some of Roosevelt's policies...		directly traceable to the
294
						bungling and greed of President
295
						Roosevelt.
296
 
297
... it is possible that we simply do		Professor Mitchell is a
298
not understand the Russian viewpoint...		communist.
299
%
300
Fourteen years in the professor dodge has taught me that one can argue
301
ingeniously on behalf of any theory, applied to any piece of literature.
302
This is rarely harmful, because normally no-one reads such essays.
303
		-- Robert Parker, quoted in "Murder Ink",  ed. D. Wynn
304
%
305
Going to church does not make a person religious, nor does going to school
306
make a person educated, any more than going to a garage makes a person a car.
307
%
308
Good day to avoid cops.  Crawl to school.
309
%
310
Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths good theatre.
311
		-- Gail Godwin
312
%
313
Graduate life: It's not just a job.  It's an indenture.
314
%
315
Graduate students and most professors are no smarter than undergrads.
316
They're just older.
317
%
318
He that teaches himself has a fool for a master.
319
		-- Benjamin Franklin
320
%
321
"He was a modest, good-humored boy.  It was Oxford that made him insufferable."
322
%
323
He who writes with no misspelled words has prevented a first suspicion
324
on the limits of his scholarship or, in the social world, of his general
325
education and culture.
326
		-- Julia Norton McCorkle
327
%
328
[He] took me into his library and showed me his books, of which he had
329
a complete set.
330
		-- Ring Lardner
331
%
332
Higher education helps your earning capacity.  Ask any college professor.
333
%
334
History books which contain no lies are extremely dull.
335
%
336
History is nothing but a collection of fables and useless trifles,
337
cluttered up with a mass of unnecessary figures and proper names.
338
		-- Leo Tolstoy
339
%
340
How do you explain school to a higher intelligence?
341
		-- Elliot, "E.T."
342
%
343
I am a bookaholic.  If you are a decent person, you will not sell me
344
another book.
345
%
346
"I am not sure what this is, but an `F' would only dignify it."
347
		-- English Professor
348
%
349
I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone
350
has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.
351
		-- Professor Lowd, English, Ohio University
352
%
353
I appreciate the fact that this draft was done in haste, but some of the
354
sentences that you are sending out in the world to do your work for you are
355
loitering in taverns or asleep beside the highway.
356
		-- Dr. Dwight Van de Vate, Professor of Philosophy,
357
		   University of Tennessee at Knoxville
358
%
359
I came out of twelve years of college and I didn't even know how to sew.
360
All I could do was account -- I couldn't even account for myself.
361
		-- Firesign Theatre
362
%
363
I came to MIT to get an education for myself and a diploma for my mother.
364
%
365
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to
366
make it shorter.
367
		-- Blaise Pascal
368
%
369
"I have to convince you, or at least snow you ..."
370
		-- Prof. Romas Aleliunas, CS 435
371
%
372
I heard a definition of an intellectual, that I thought was very interesting:
373
a man who takes more words than are necessary to tell more than he knows.
374
		-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
375
%
376
I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you an education.
377
		-- Wilson Mizner
378
%
379
I think your opinions are reasonable, except for the one about my mental
380
instability.
381
		-- Psychology Professor, Farifield University
382
%
383
"I'm returning this note to you, instead of your paper, because it (your paper)
384
presently occupies the bottom of my bird cage."
385
		-- English Professor, Providence College
386
%
387
If any man wishes to be humbled and mortified, let him become president
388
of Harvard.
389
		-- Edward Holyoke
390
%
391
If he had only learnt a little less, how infinitely better he might have
392
taught much more!
393
%
394
If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?
395
%
396
If little else, the brain is an educational toy.
397
		-- Tom Robbins
398
%
399
If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied harder.
400
		-- Pope John Paul I
401
%
402
If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get
403
the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude.  See in
404
college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural
405
method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting that you shall
406
learn what you have no taste or capacity for.  The college, which should
407
be a place of delightful labor, is made odious and unhealthy, and the
408
young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded spirits.
409
I would have the studies elective.  Scholarship is to be created not
410
by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge.  The wise
411
instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the
412
attractions the study has for himself.  The marking is a system for schools,
413
not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to
414
put on a professor.
415
		-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
416
%
417
If truth is beauty, how come no one has their hair done in the library?
418
		-- Lily Tomlin
419
%
420
If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.
421
		-- Wittgenstein
422
%
423
If while you are in school, there is a shortage of qualified personnel
424
in a particular field, then by the time you graduate with the necessary
425
qualifications, that field's employment market is glutted.
426
		-- Marguerite Emmons
427
%
428
If you are too busy to read, then you are too busy.
429
%
430
If you can't read this, blame a teacher.
431
%
432
If you resist reading what you disagree with, how will you ever acquire
433
deeper insights into what you believe?  The things most worth reading
434
are precisely those that challenge our convictions.
435
%
436
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
437
		-- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
438
%
439
If you took all the students that felt asleep in class and laid them end to
440
end, they'd be a lot more comfortable.
441
		-- "Graffiti in the Big Ten"
442
%
443
"If you understand what you're doing, you're not learning anything."
444
		-- A. L.
445
%
446
Ignorance is never out of style.  It was in fashion yesterday, it is the
447
rage today, and it will set the pace tomorrow.
448
		-- Franklin K. Dane
449
%
450
Ignorance is when you don't know anything and somebody finds it out.
451
%
452
Ignorance must certainly be bliss or there wouldn't be so many people
453
so resolutely pursuing it. 
454
%
455
Illiterate?  Write today, for free help!
456
%
457
	In a forest a fox bumps into a little rabbit, and says, "Hi,
458
Junior, what are you up to?"
459
	"I'm writing a dissertation on how rabbits eat foxes," said the
460
rabbit.
461
	"Come now, friend rabbit, you know that's impossible!  No one
462
will publish such rubbish!"
463
	"Well, follow me and I'll show you."
464
	They both go into the rabbit's dwelling and after a while the
465
rabbit emerges with a satisfied expression on his face.  Comes along a
466
wolf.  "Hello, little buddy, what are we doing these days?"
467
	"I'm writing the 2'nd chapter of my thesis, on how rabbits devour
468
wolves."
469
	"Are you crazy?  Where's your academic honesty?"
470
	"Come with me and I'll show you."
471
	As before, the rabbit comes out with a satisfied look on his face
472
and a diploma in his paw.  Finally, the camera pans into the rabbit's cave
473
and, as everybody should have guessed by now, we see a mean-looking, huge
474
lion, sitting, picking his teeth and belching, next to some furry, bloody
475
remnants of the wolf and the fox.
476
 
477
	The moral: It's not the contents of your thesis that are
478
important -- it's your PhD advisor that really counts.
479
%
480
In California, Bill Honig, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, said he
481
thought the general public should have a voice in defining what an excellent
482
teacher should know.  "I would not leave the definition of math," Dr. Honig
483
said, "up to the mathematicians."
484
		-- The New York Times, October 22, 1985
485
%
486
Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don't
487
they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning
488
anything?  If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five
489
years we would have the smartest race of people on earth.
490
		-- The Best of Will Rogers
491
%
492
Iowa State -- the high school after high school!
493
		-- Crow T. Robot
494
%
495
It has been said [by Anatole France], "it is not by amusing oneself
496
that one learns," and, in reply: "it is *____only* by amusing oneself that
497
one can learn."
498
		-- Edward Kasner and James R. Newman
499
%
500
It has long been an article of our folklore that too much knowledge or skill,
501
or especially consummate expertise, is a bad thing.  It dehumanizes those who
502
achieve it, and makes difficult their commerce with just plain folks, in whom
503
good old common sense has not been obliterated by mere book learning or fancy
504
notions.  This popular delusion flourishes now more than ever, for we are all
505
infected with it in the schools, where educationists have elevated it from
506
folklore to Article of Belief.  It enhances their self-esteem and lightens
507
their labors by providing theoretical justification for deciding that
508
appreciation, or even simple awareness, is more to be prized than knowledge,
509
and relating (to self and others), more than skill, in which minimum
510
competence will be quite enough.
511
		-- The Underground Grammarian
512
%
513
	It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and
514
by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate
515
the habit of thinking about what we are doing.  The precise opposite is the
516
case.  Civilization advances by extending the numbers of important operations
517
which we can perform without thinking about them.  Operations of thought are
518
like cavalry charges in battle -- they are strictly limited in number, they
519
require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.
520
		-- Alfred North Whitehead
521
%
522
			It's grad exam time...
523
COMPUTER SCIENCE
524
	Inside your desk you'll find a listing of the DEC/VMS operating
525
system in IBM 1710 machine code. Show what changes are necessary to convert
526
this code into a UNIX Berkeley 7 operating system.  Prove that these fixes are
527
bug free and run correctly. You should gain at least 150% efficiency in the
528
new system.  (You should take no more than 10 minutes on this question.)
529
 
530
MATHEMATICS
531
	If X equals PI times R^2, construct a formula showing how long
532
it would take a fire ant to drill a hole through a dill pickle, if the
533
length-girth ratio of the ant to the pickle were 98.17:1.
534
 
535
GENERAL KNOWLEDGE
536
Describe the Universe.  Give three examples.
537
%
538
			It's grad exam time...
539
MEDICINE
540
	You have been provided with a razor blade, a piece of gauze, and a
541
bottle of Scotch.  Remove your appendix.  Do not suture until your work has
542
been inspected.  (You have 15 minutes.)
543
 
544
HISTORY
545
	Describe the history of the papacy from its origins to the present
546
day, concentrating especially, but not exclusively, on its social, political,
547
economic, religious and philisophical impact upon Europe, Asia, America, and
548
Africa.  Be brief, concise, and specific.
549
 
550
BIOLOGY
551
	Create life.  Estimate the differences in subsequent human culture
552
if this form of life had been created 500 million years ago or earlier, with
553
special attention to its probable effect on the English parliamentary system.
554
%
555
It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it
556
is.  If you don't, it's its.  Then too, it's hers.  It isn't her's.  It
557
isn't our's either.  It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs.
558
		-- Oxford University Press, Edpress News
559
%
560
Joe Cool always spends the first two weeks at college sailing his frisbee.
561
		-- Snoopy
562
%
563
Learned men are the cisterns of knowledge, not the fountainheads.
564
%
565
Learning at some schools is like drinking from a firehose.
566
%
567
Learning without thought is labor lost;
568
thought without learning is perilous.
569
		-- Confucius
570
%
571
Maybe ain't ain't so correct, but I notice that lots of folks who ain't
572
using ain't ain't eatin' well.
573
		-- Will Rogers
574
%
575
Most seminars have a happy ending.  Everyone's glad when they're over.
576
%
577
My father, a good man, told me, "Never lose your ignorance; you cannot
578
replace it."
579
		-- Erich Maria Remarque
580
%
581
Never have so many understood so little about so much.
582
		-- James Burke
583
%
584
Never let your schooling interfere with your education.
585
%
586
No discipline is ever requisite to force attendance upon lectures which are
587
really worth the attending.
588
		-- Adam Smith, "The Wealth of Nations"
589
%
590
No matter who you are, some scholar can show you the great idea you had
591
was had by someone before you.
592
%
593
No wonder you're tired!  You understood so much today.
594
%
595
Normally our rules are rigid; we tend to discretion, if for no other reason
596
than self-protection.  We never recommend any of our graduates, although we
597
cheerfully provide information as to those who have failed their courses.
598
		-- Jack Vance, "Freitzke's Turn"
599
%
600
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper
601
is from the wrong kind of tree.
602
		-- Professor, EECS, George Washington University
603
 
604
I'm looking forward to working with you on this next year.
605
		-- Professor, Harvard, on a  senior thesis.
606
%
607
		`O' LEVEL COUNTER CULTURE
608
Timewarp allowed: 3 hours.  Do not scrawl situationalist graffiti in the
609
margins or stub your rollups in the inkwells.  Orange may be worn.  Credit
610
will be given to candidates who self-actualise.
611
 
612
	(1) Compare and contrast Pink Floyd with Black Sabbath and say why
613
	    neither has street credibility.
614
	(2) "Even Buddha would have been hard pushed to reach Nirvana squatting
615
	    on a juggernaut route."  Consider the dialectic of inner truth
616
	    and inner city.
617
	(3) Discuss degree of hassle involved in paranoia about being sucked
618
	    into a black hole.
619
	(4) "The Egomaniac's Liberation Front were a bunch of revisionist
620
	    ripoff merchants."  Comment on this insult.
621
	(5) Account for the lack of references to brown rice in Dylan's lyrics.
622
	(6) "Castenada was a bit of a bozo."  How far is this a fair summing
623
	    up of western dualism?
624
	(7) Hermann Hesse was a Pisces.  Discuss.
625
%
626
"OK, now let's look at four dimensions on the blackboard."
627
		-- Dr. Joy
628
%
629
OK, so you're a Ph.D.  Just don't touch anything.
630
%
631
One cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs -- but it is amazing
632
how many eggs one can break without making a decent omelette.
633
		-- Professor Charles P. Issawi
634
%
635
Periphrasis is the putting of things in a round-about way.  "The cost may be
636
upwards of a figure rather below 10m#." is a periphrasis for The cost may be
637
nearly 10m#.  "In Paris there reigns a complete absence of really reliable
638
news" is a periphrasis for There is no reliable news in Paris.  "Rarely does
639
the 'Little Summer' linger until November, but at times its stay has been
640
prolonged until quite late in the year's penultimate month" contains a
641
periphrasis for November, and another for lingers.  "The answer is in the
642
negative" is a periphrasis for No.  "Was made the recipient of" is a
643
periphrasis for Was presented with.  The periphrasis style is hardly possible
644
on any considerable scale without much use of abstract nouns such as "basis,
645
case, character, connexion, dearth, description, duration, framework, lack,
646
nature, reference, regard, respect".  The existence of abstract nouns is a
647
proof that abstract thought has occurred; abstract thought is a mark of
648
civilized man; and so it has come about that periphrasis and civilization are
649
by many held to be inseparable.  These good people feel that there is an almost
650
indecent nakedness, a reversion to barbarism, in saying No news is good news
651
instead of "The absence of intelligence is an indication of satisfactory
652
developments."
653
		-- Fowler's English Usage
654
%
655
"Plaese porrf raed."
656
		-- Prof. Michael O'Longhlin, S.U.N.Y. Purchase
657
%
658
Practice is the best of all instructors.
659
		-- Publilius
660
%
661
Princeton's taste is sweet like a strawberry tart.  Harvard's is a subtle
662
taste, like whiskey, coffee, or tobacco.  It may even be a bad habit, for
663
all I know.
664
		-- Prof. J.H. Finley '25
665
%
666
Professor Gorden Newell threw another shutout in last week's Chem Eng. 130
667
midterm.  Once again a student did not receive a single point on his exam.
668
Newell has now tossed 5 shutouts this quarter.  Newell's earned exam average
669
has now dropped to a phenomenal 30%.
670
%
671
Reading is thinking with someone else's head instead of one's own.
672
%
673
Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
674
%
675
Reporter:   "How did you like school when you were growing up, Yogi?"
676
Yogi Berra: "Closed."
677
%
678
Rules for Good Grammar #4.
679
	 (1) Don't use no double negatives.
680
	 (2) Make each pronoun agree with their antecedents.
681
	 (3) Join clauses good, like a conjunction should.
682
	 (4) About them sentence fragments.
683
	 (5) When dangling, watch your participles.
684
	 (6) Verbs has got to agree with their subjects.
685
	 (7) Just between you and i, case is important.
686
	 (8) Don't write run-on sentences when they are hard to read.
687
	 (9) Don't use commas, which aren't necessary.
688
	(10) Try to not ever split infinitives.
689
	(11) It is important to use your apostrophe's correctly.
690
	(12) Proofread your writing to see if you any words out.
691
	(13) Correct speling is essential.
692
	(14) A preposition is something you never end a sentence with.
693
	(15) While a transcendant vocabulary is laudable, one must be eternally
694
	     careful so that the calculated objective of communication does not
695
	     become ensconsed in obscurity.  In other words, eschew obfuscation.
696
%
697
Smartness runs in my family.  When I went to school I was so smart my
698
teacher was in my class for five years.
699
		-- George Burns
700
%
701
Some scholars are like donkeys, they merely carry a lot of books.
702
		-- Folk saying
703
%
704
"Speed is subsittute fo accurancy."
705
%
706
Spelling is a lossed art.
707
%
708
Suddenly, Professor Liebowitz realizes he has come to the seminar
709
without his duck ...
710
%
711
Teachers have class.
712
%
713
The 'A' is for content, the 'minus' is for not typing it.  Don't ever do
714
this to my eyes again.
715
		-- Professor Ronald Brady, Philosophy, Ramapo State College
716
%
717
The alarm clock that is louder than God's own belongs to the roommate with
718
the earliest class.
719
%
720
The average Ph.D thesis is nothing but the transference of bones from
721
one graveyard to another.
722
		-- J. Frank Dobie, "A Texan in England"
723
%
724
The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned
725
into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D.
726
		-- Nelson Algren, "Writers at Work"
727
%
728
	"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff
729
and blow, "is to learn something.  That's the only thing that never fails.
730
You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at
731
night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love,
732
you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your
733
honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for
734
it then -- to learn.  Learn why the world wags and what wags it.  That is
735
the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be
736
tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.  Learning
737
is the only thing for you.  Look what a lot of things there are to learn."
738
		-- T.H. White, "The Once and Future King"
739
%
740
The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up
741
in the morning, and does not stop until you get to school.
742
%
743
The college graduate is presented with a sheepskin to cover his
744
intellectual nakedness.
745
		-- Robert M. Hutchins
746
%
747
The end of the world will occur at three p.m., this Friday, with
748
symposium to follow.
749
%
750
The future is a race between education and catastrophe.
751
		-- H.G. Wells
752
%
753
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
754
%
755
The man who has never been flogged has never been taught.
756
		-- Menander
757
%
758
The only thing that experience teaches us is that experience teaches us nothing.
759
		-- Andre Maurois (Emile Herzog)
760
%
761
The only thing we learn from history is that we do not learn.
762
		-- Earl Warren
763
 
764
That men do not learn very much from history is the most important of all
765
the lessons that history has to teach.
766
		-- Aldous Huxley
767
 
768
We learn from history that we do not learn from history.
769
		-- Georg Hegel
770
 
771
HISTORY:  Papa Hegel he say that all we learn from history is that we learn
772
nothing from history.  I know people who can't even learn from what happened
773
this morning.  Hegel must have been taking the long view.
774
		-- Chad C. Mulligan, "The Hipcrime Vocab"
775
%
776
The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.
777
		-- Hegel
778
 
779
I know guys can't learn from yesterday ... Hegel must be taking the long view.
780
		-- John Brunner, "Stand on Zanzibar"
781
%
782
The problem with graduate students, in general, is that they have
783
to sleep every few days.
784
%
785
The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is a constant, but nowadays the
786
illiterates can read.
787
		-- Alberto Moravia
788
%
789
The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking.
790
		-- Christopher Morley
791
%
792
"The student in question is performing minimally for his peer group and
793
is an emerging underachiever."
794
%
795
The sum of the intelligence of the world is constant.  The population is,
796
of course, growing.
797
%
798
The sunlights differ, but there is only one darkness.
799
		-- Ursula K. LeGuin, "The Dispossessed"
800
%
801
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed
802
ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
803
		-- F. Scott Fitzgerald
804
%
805
The three best things about going to school are June, July, and August.
806
%
807
The Tree of Learning bears the noblest fruit, but noble fruit tastes bad.
808
%
809
The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and religious
810
seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging from the
811
unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its yielding a more
812
bounteous harvest of gobbledegook than the rest of the world put together.
813
		-- Sir Peter Medawar
814
%
815
The world is coming to an end!  Repent and return those library books!
816
%
817
The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an
818
open doorway with an open mind.
819
		-- E.B. White
820
%
821
There are no answers, only cross-references.
822
		-- Weiner
823
%
824
This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.
825
		-- Winston Churchill
826
%
827
Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for
828
these only gave life, those the art of living well.
829
		-- Aristotle
830
%
831
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
832
		-- Hector Berlioz
833
%
834
To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education.
835
To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun.  To accuse neither
836
oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.
837
		-- Epictetus
838
%
839
To craunch a marmoset.
840
		-- Pedro Carolino, "English as She is Spoke"
841
%
842
To teach is to learn twice.
843
		-- Joseph Joubert
844
%
845
To teach is to learn.
846
%
847
Try not to have a good time ... This is supposed to be educational.
848
		-- Charles Schulz
849
%
850
Trying to get an education here is like trying to get a drink from a fire hose.
851
%
852
Universities are places of knowledge.  The freshman each bring a little
853
in with them, and the seniors take none away, so knowledge accumulates.
854
%
855
University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
856
		-- Henry Kissinger
857
%
858
Walt:	Dad, what's gradual school?
859
Garp:	Gradual school?
860
Walt:	Yeah.  Mom says her work's more fun now that she's teaching
861
	gradual school.
862
Garp:	Oh.  Well, gradual school is someplace you go and gradually
863
	find out that you don't want to go to school anymore.
864
		-- The World According To Garp
865
%
866
"We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"
867
		-- Vroomfondel
868
%
869
We know next to nothing about virtually everything.  It is not necessary
870
to know the origin of the universe; it is necessary to want to know.
871
Civilization depends not on any particular knowledge, but on the disposition
872
to crave knowledge.
873
		-- George Will
874
%
875
We're fantastically incredibly sorry for all these extremely unreasonable
876
things we did.  I can only plead that my simple, barely-sentient friend
877
and myself are underprivileged, deprived and also college students.
878
		-- Waldo D.R. Dobbs
879
%
880
	"We're running out of adjectives to describe our situation.  We
881
had crisis, then we went into chaos, and now what do we call this?" said
882
Nicaraguan economist Francisco Mayorga, who holds a doctorate from Yale.
883
		-- The Washington Post, February, 1988
884
 
885
The New Yorker's comment:
886
	At Harvard they'd call it a noun.
887
%
888
What does education often do?  It makes a straight cut ditch of a
889
free meandering brook.
890
		-- Henry David Thoreau
891
%
892
		What I Did During My Fall Semester
893
On the first day of my fall semester, I got up.
894
Then I went to the library to find a thesis topic.
895
Then I hung out in front of the Dover.
896
 
897
On the second day of my fall semester, I got up.
898
Then I went to the library to find a thesis topic.
899
Then I hung out in front of the Dover.
900
 
901
On the third day of my fall semester, I got up.
902
Then I went to the library to find a thesis topic.
903
I found a thesis topic:
904
	How to keep people from hanging out in front of the Dover.
905
		-- Sister Mary Elephant, "Student Statement for Black Friday"
906
%
907
What makes you think graduate school is supposed to be satisfying?
908
		-- Erica Jong, "Fear of Flying"
909
%
910
What passes for optimism is most often the effect of an intellectual error.
911
		-- Raymond Aron, "The Opium of the Intellectuals"
912
%
913
What we do not understand we do not possess.
914
		-- Goethe
915
%
916
What's page one, a preemptive strike?
917
		-- Professor Freund, Communication, Ramapo State College
918
%
919
When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into
920
the soul of the boy sitting next to me.
921
		-- Woody Allen
922
%
923
Whenever anyone says, "theoretically," they really mean, "not really."
924
		-- Dave Parnas
925
%
926
Where do I find the time for not reading so many books?
927
		-- Karl Kraus
928
%
929
"Whom are you?" said he, for he had been to night school.
930
		-- George Ade
931
%
932
	Wouldn't the sentence "I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish
933
and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign" have been clearer if
934
quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and
935
and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and
936
Chips, as well as after Chips?
937
%
938
You can't expect a boy to be vicious till he's been to a good school.
939
		-- H.H. Munro
940
%
941
You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.
942
		-- J. D. Salinger
943
%
944
You may have heard that a dean is to faculty as a hydrant is to a dog.
945
		-- Alfred Kahn
946
%
947
"You should, without hesitation, pound your typewriter into a plowshare,
948
your paper into fertilizer, and enter agriculture"
949
		-- Business Professor, University of Georgia
950
%
951
Your education begins where what is called your education is over.
952
%