Everyone praises Harvard 'for the students.' But what makes Harvard's students so great is that they are, in many ways, a cross-section of the larger world. They are normal people who happen to be excellent, and this sets them apart. People who go to Yale go because they want to attend Yale. People who go to Harvard go because they can.
You have to be really tenacious. You have to keep at it. There are many roads to get there. If you can get yourself into Harvard, that's a good way to go, because every Harvard graduating class, the agencies come trolling around and they'll look for you. So if you go to Harvard, you'll get found there.
Nigeria was a blank on the map - there weren't even any maps. The US State Department, everyone said don't go there. It was courageous of Harvard University: the notion was that we would match Harvard students with Nigerian students, so that every student would have a guide, creating a guarantee of intimacy with the city.
I went to college at Harvard, then did three years of graduate school at Yale. At both places I studied comparative literature. People find it odd that I went to both Harvard and Yale, and I guess it is odd, but that's just what people did where I grew up.
Children are amazing, and while I go to places like Princeton and Harvard and Yale, and of course I teach at Columbia, NYU, and that's nice and I love students, but the most fun of all are the real little ones, the young ones.
Back in Kansas City, I associated Harvard with sort of gnarly guys who wore capes for effect in a kind of Oscar Wilde scene. Even though I also knew there was such a thing as the Harvard-Yale game, I was still a little surprised that Harvard had a football team. I just assumed if there were such a thing as gay people, that they were nothing like us. Little did I know that probably half the swim team at Yale was gay.
I am a real New Yorker... I didn't go to Harvard, I didn't go to Yale... I rooted for the Yankees; I didn't root for the Boston Red Sox.
Whenever I go to a new team the jabs about being a Harvard guy are always more prevalent. This is mainly because people don't know much about me other than being the Harvard guy that did well on his Wonderlic test. The more time I spend with people, the less the Harvard stuff comes up.
There's probably people that go to Harvard and say, 'Listen, I went to Harvard. I got a great education, and I can't find a job, or I didn't become the success that I could have been.' Sure, I mean, you probably have that at every major university.
Yale students want to impress you with what they're doing. Harvard students want to impress you with how cool they look while doing it.
The U.S. is blessed with tremendously creative and imaginative law students at places like Chicago, Harvard, Columbia and Yale.
Harvard produces leaders. People with Harvard degrees go on to become administrators in high-level positions in state educational departments and in public schools around the country.
I remember I was up for the role of Jim in 'Huck Finn,' and because I went to Harvard and Yale, they didn't think I would be able to play a slave. I said, 'Oh, please.' I had to go in there and prove to them that I wasn't too intelligent to play a slave.
Yale men do not like to be told anything by people who didn't go to Yale. The closest I came to Yale was once I had one of their padlocks.
The difference between being Mexican and being Chinese, as I can see it, is that when you go to Harvard from a Chinese family, the whole family goes to Harvard. When you're a Mexican and you go to Harvard, you betray the family.
I never like the TV or movie Harvard characters. The fact of the matter is that most people who go to Harvard went to public schools and weren't in final clubs. I didn't even know that final clubs existed until I was a senior.
In 1970, Dean Robert Ebert offered me the Chair of Pathology at Harvard Medical School. I moved to Harvard because I missed the university environment and, more particularly, the stimulating interaction with the eager, enthusiastic, and unprejudiced young minds of the students and fellows.