Top 1129 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Professors - Page 2

Spin' is a polite word for deception. Spinners mislead by means that range from subtle omissions to outright lies. Spin paints a false picture of reality by bending facts, mischaracterizing the words of others, ignoring or denying crucial evidence, or just 'spinning a yarn' - by making things up.

Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. Call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically, that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.

Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.

What is to be gained if we are so intent in reaching out to the unchurched that we then unchurch the reached?

What we ought to be trying to do is limit the harm that Christian communities and other religious communities can do. But we can't rely on them to make a world of difference. It's just not going to happen.

At the core of all successful societies are procedures for blocking the advancement of bad men

Decreasing economic growth and increasing inequality leads to increased uncertainty.

All too often, schools resemble museums, reflecting the past rather than shaping the future

Sometimes creativity just means the daily work of helping others to see a problem in a different way.

Admit when you're wrong. Shut up when you're right.

There is nothing quite so gentle, deep, and irrational as running--and nothing quite so savage, so wild.

I think that there is a middle-class desire, and maybe an almost universal desire, among many human beings to live in clean neighborhoods, among people like themselves, around people with whom they feel comfortable. That can be exclusive, it could be exclusionary. It could be racist, classist, genocidal, and so on. Most people like comfort. Now what provides a sense of comfort varies. I do think that people who like living in cities like small-scale human interaction and they like the social dimensions of aesthetic diversity that Jane Jacobs wrote about.

There are many kinds of adult adversities that can provoke severe psychological distress, including debt and unemployment, dysfunctional marital relationships and occupational stress. The reality is that the social causes of mental ill-health are all around us.

Pride does not listen. It knows.

Hope provides comfort, and hope does not always require probability.

If Christ is risen, nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen-nothing else matters.

If something cannot go on for ever, it will stop

People ask, 'Is the science going to run ahead of the ethics?' I don't think that's always the problem. I think it's that the science runs ahead of the politics. Bioethics can alert people to something coming down the road, but it doesn't mean policy and politicians are going to pay attention. They tend to respond when there's an immediate crisis. The job of the ethicist, in some ways, is to warn or be prophetic. You can yell loudly, but you can't necessarily get everybody to leave the cinema, so to speak.

To be or not to be?' That is not the question. What is the question? The question is not one of being, but of becoming. 'To become more or not to become more' This is the question faced by each intelligence in our universe.

The biggest roadblock to middle-class economic advancement is that governments confiscate more than a third of all family income. Each year the average American taxpayer works 127 days - from January 1 until May 7 - just to pay taxes.

Without constraint, without any form of mental compulsion, the act of belief becomes the freest possible projection of what resides in our hearts. Like the poet's image of a church bell that reveals its latent music only when struck, or a dragonfly that flames forth its beauty only in flight, so does the content of a human heart lie buried until action calls it forth. The greatest act of self-revelation occurs when we choose what we will believe, in that space of freedom that exists between knowing that a thing is and knowing that a thing is not.

Willpower is what separates us from the animals. It's the capacity to restrain our impulses, resist temptation - do what's right and good for us in the long run, not what we want to do right now. It's central, in fact, to civilisation.

It is a simple fact of life on earth that there is going to be no successful mitigation of the climate change problem without a truly global effort. All developing companies or all major developing countries have to be part of that and accept substantial constraints on greenhouse gas emissions.

The neural processes underlying that which we call creativity have nothing to do with rationality. That is to say, if we look at how the brain generates creativity, we will see that it is not a rational process at all; creativity is not born out of reasoning.

When you see what you're here for, the world begins to mirror your purpose in a magical way. It's almost as if you suddenly find yourself on a stage in a play that was written expressly for you.

The greatest fear dogs know is the fear that you will not come back when you go out the door without them.

Much to my surprise, the Islamic scriptures in the Quran were actually far less bloody and less violent than those in the Bible.

A study conducted by the State University of New York at Buffalo Medical School suggested that in times of stress a dog is likely to be more help in calming you down than a spouse or partner. Most dog owners can guess the reason why: dogs never judge us and never compete with us.

To snatch the passing moment and examine it for signs of eternity is the noblest of occupations.

Human beings need pleasure the way they need vitamins.

Going viral isn’t random, magic, or luck. It’s a science.

I believe in the necessity for struggle by people at the bottom of any society.

The great moral question of the twenty-first century is this: if all knowledge, all culture, all art, all useful information can be costlessly given to everyone at the same price that it is given to anyone; if everyone can have everything, anywhere, all the time, why is it ever moral to exclude anyone?

It is curious that while good people go to great lengths to spare their children from suffering, few of them seem to notice that the one (and only) guaranteed way to prevent all the suffering of their children is not to bring those children into existence in the first place.

If you have an effect that nobody can replicate, then your phenomenon fades away. So if you want to to have a legacy, then you jolly well better have an effect that replicates.

The real future of America, the best future for ourselves and our children, is to go back in the direction of limited government restrained by the Constitution.

Our modern economy privileges pure profit, momentary transactions and rapid fluidity. Part of craft’s anchoring role is that it helps to objectify experience and also to slow down labor. It is not about quick transactions or easy victories. That slow tempo of craftwork, of taking the time you need to do something well, is profoundly stabilizing to individuals.

Civility means a great deal more than just being nice to one another. It is complex and encompasses learning how to connect successfully and live well with others, developing thoughtfulness, and fostering effective self-expression and communication. Civility includes courtesy, politeness, mutual respect, fairness, good manners, as well as a matter of good health. Taking an active interest in the well-being of our community and concern for the health of our society is also involved in civility.

Islamic tradition is full of examples of supporting the autonomy of women and the empowerment of women. Very few people know that in Islamic history there have been well over two thousand women jurists.

A child who dies from hunger is a murdered child.

If you can't swallow your pride, you can't lead. Even the highest mountain had animals that step on it.

You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds. In my view there is absolutely nothing wrong in that. What I want to bring into the open is the fact that we are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide that.

Most teams aren't teams at all but merely collections of individual relationships with the boss. Each individual vying with the others for power, prestige and position.

There is an objective reality out there, but we view it through the spectacles of our beliefs, attitudes, and values.

To say that it is not our fault does not relieve us of responsibility. However, we may not have polluted the air, but we need to take responsibility, along with others, for cleaning it up. Each of us needs to look at our own behavior. Am I perpetuating and reinforcing the negative messages so pervasive in our culture, or am I seeking to challenge them?

One thing evangelicals want is a reprieve from intolerance against their beliefs, values, and practices.

First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.

We're training kids to do what computers do, which is spit back facts. And computers are always going to be better than human beings at that. But what they're not going to be better at is being social, navigating relationships, being citizens in a community. So we need to change the whole definition of what success in school, and out of school, means.

The center of gravity for opposition shifts to Idlib province and Idlib city. That city is dominated by the al-Qaida wing of the opposition and other Salafist forces. The United States and the West cannot support those Salafists and al-Qaida. It means that the rebels are going to have a very hard time getting significant amounts of support.

There are some forms of stupidity that one must be highly intelligent and educated to achieve.

For me, liberals are people who seek to use government to promote the general welfare.

Almost all the world is natural chemicals, so it really makes you re-think everything. A cup of coffee is filled with chemicals. They've identified a thousand chemicals in a cup of coffee. But we only found 22 that have been tested in animal cancer tests out of this thousand. And of those, 17 are carcinogens. There are ten milligrams of known carcinogens in a cup of coffee and thats more carcinogens than youre likely to get from pesticide residues for a year!

When examining evidence relevant to a given belief, people are inclined to see what they expect to see, and conclude what they expect to conclude. Information that is consistent with our pre-existing beliefs is often accepted at face value, whereas evidence that contradicts them is critically scrutinized and discounted. Our beliefs may thus be less responsive than they should to the implications of new information

There is no level playing field. Any time our society says that a powerful chemical company has the same right as a low income family that's living next door, that playing field is not level, is not fair.

You need companies investing in these countries, so women have employment opportunities, and you also need these forces of conscience. Without the activists, in the United States we would still have child labor, we would still have 16-hour days.

One can enjoy a wood fire worthily only when he warms his thoughts by it as well as his hands and feet.

I'd like to introduce a man with a lot of charm, talent, and wit. Unfortunately, he couldn't be here tonight, so instead . . .

A democratic education means that we educate people in a way that ensures they can think independently, that they can use information, knowledge, and technology, among other things, to draw their own conclusions.

Either we pay the government's bills, or we leave them for our kids to pay. It's that simple.

Everyone has a potential for greatness.