“If Universities do not study useless subjects, who will?”

—  George Francis FitzGerald

[The Value of Useless Studies, Nature, 25 February 1892, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000047662452;view=1up;seq=433] (p. 392)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "If Universities do not study useless subjects, who will?" by George Francis FitzGerald?
George Francis FitzGerald photo
George Francis FitzGerald 2
Irish physicist 1851–1901

Related quotes

Northrop Frye photo

“Literature is not a subject of study, but an object of study.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

"Quotes", Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957), Polemical Introduction

Henri-Frédéric Amiel photo

“At bottom there is but one subject of study: the forms and metamorphoses of mind. All other subjects may be reduced to that; all other studies bring us back to this study.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet

20 July 1848
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries

Henri Fayol photo

“Are there principles of administration? Nobody doubts it. What do they consist of? That is what I propose to discuss today. The subjects of recruitment, organization and direction of personnel will form the subject of the second part of this study.”

Henri Fayol (1841–1925) Developer of Fayolism

Comment: The principles of administration Fayol presented in this publication (p. 912-916) were:
# Unity of command
# Hierarchical transmission of orders (chain-of-command)
# Separation of powers - authority, subordination, responsibility and control
# Centralization
# Order
# Discipline
# Planning
# Organization chart
# Meetings and reports
# Accounting
Comment: Wren, Boyd and Bedeian (2002) commented with the words: "This previously untranslated and unpublished 1908 presentation from Henri Fayol’s personal papers indicates the progress he had made in developing his theory of administration."
Source: L’exposé des principes généraux d’administration, 1908, p. 912

Moses Hess photo

“He who wishes to study the barometric level of spiritual freedom must examine the relationship of the state to its Jewish subjects.”

Moses Hess (1812–1875) German philosopher

Translation brought in Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism, and the Russian Jews, 1862-1917 by Jonathan Frankel‏
Die europäische Triarchie (The European Triarchy)

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“Like integrity, love of life was not a subject to be studied, it was a contagion to be caught. And you had to catch it from someone who had it.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Mirror Dance (1994)

Jerry Coyne photo

“Theology schools are the wisdom teeth of academia: useless and sometimes injurious remnants of earlier times. If you want to teach comparative religion in college, you can do it in sociology departments, and if you want to teach the history of religion or of how scripture was confected, you can do it in history departments. There is no rationale for a modern secular university to teach theology, for it is the study of a nonexistent being and its supposed wants.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

" Theology schools are dying https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2016/03/19/theology-schools-are-dying/" March 19, 2016

“Empower the useless people who do not know how to empower themselves. That is the beginning of change and progress.”

Titon Rahmawan
Thomas Berry photo

“The universe is composed of subjects to be communed with, not primarily of objects to be used. As a subject, each component of the universe is capable of having rights.”

Thomas Berry (1914–2009) American priest

Appendix 2, p. 149
Evening Thoughts

Richard Feynman photo

“The theoretical broadening which comes from having many humanities subjects on the campus is offset by the general dopiness of the people who study these things.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

letter to Robert Bacher (6 April 1950), quoted in Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (1992) by James Gleick, p. 278

Jean Paul Sartre photo

“In doing Good, I lose myself in Being, I abandon my particularity, I become a universal subject.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

77
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)

Related topics