Quotes about campus

A collection of quotes on the topic of campus, student, universe, university.

Quotes about campus

Peter F. Drucker photo

“Universities won't survive. The future is outside the traditional campus, outside the traditional classroom. Distance learning is coming on fast.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

I got my degree through E-mail http://www.forbes.com/forbes/1997/0616/5912084a.html, Forbes (June 16, 1997)
1990s and later

Dennis Prager photo
Richelle Mead photo
Rachel Caine photo

“I have permission to live off campus.” She didn’t say from whom, because it was primarily herself.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: The Dead Girls' Dance

Victor Davis Hanson photo
Ralph Ellison photo
George W. Bush photo
Richard Rodríguez photo

“I was the student at Stanford who remembered to notice the Mexican-American janitors and gardeners working on campus.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982)

Bob Black photo
Camille Paglia photo
William F. Buckley Jr. photo

“One must recently have lived on or close to a college campus to have a vivid intimation of what has happened. It is there that we see how a number of energetic social innovators, plugging their grand designs, succeeded over the years in capturing the liberal intellectual imagination. And since ideas rule the world, the ideologues, having won over the intellectual class, simply walked in and started to run things. Run just about everything.”

William F. Buckley Jr. (1925–2008) American conservative author and commentator

There never was an age of conformity quite like this one, or a camaraderie quite like the Liberals'.
"Publisher's Statement", in the first issue of National Review (19 November 1955) http://www.nationalreview.com/flashback/buckley200406290949.asp.

Bret Easton Ellis photo
William H. McNeill photo
Ken MacLeod photo

“(on The Hamburg Cell): "It shows them as weak, alienated individuals being recruited by the classic methods of any campus cult. Young men without a strong sense of self are a Microsoft for mind viruses, and these were no exception."”

Ken MacLeod (1954) Scottish science fiction writer

weblog post http://kenmacleod.blogspot.com/2004_09_01_kenmacleod_archive.html, 3 September 2004
Other sources

Revilo P. Oliver photo
Tom Robbins photo
Alex Salmond photo

“participation in the Crichton campus. It is now official - miracles happen in an SNP run Scotland!”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Principles and Priorities : Programme for Government (September 5, 2007)

Allen C. Guelzo photo
Camille Paglia photo
Michelle Obama photo

“When I first arrived at school as a first-generation college student, I didn’t know anyone on campus except my brother. I didn’t know how to pick the right classes or find the right buildings. I didn’t even bring the right size sheets for my dorm room bed. I didn’t realize those beds were so long. So I was a little overwhelmed and a little isolated.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

Statements proceeding introduction of husband at College Opportunity Summit (16 January 2014) http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/01/16/remarks-president-and-first-lady-college-opportunity-summit
2010s

Michael Bloomberg photo
Alex Jones photo

“You're supposed to get on your knees at midnight or in the early morning and tell God you repent on things you've done. You don't tell in a football stadium, “Mainstream media: you're my God, I am bad, tell me what to do.” That is sick. They're kneeling to political correctness and hating white people. They're kneeling to white genocide --- and then I don't want anybody to be genocided (sic). But everywhere it's: “Kill the whites, kill the whites.” The universities: “No whites can come on campus.” It's a bunch of weird white people going, “We need to kill all the white people.” Just everywhere. Hillary: “We lost because of white people.””

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

It's the most racist, weird, anti-Martin Luther King crap I've ever heard. Martin Luther King would say, “You people are crazy.”
Alex Jones: Protesting NFL players are “kneeling to white genocide https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2017/09/26/alex-jones-protesting-nfl-players-are-kneeling-white-genocide/218051"Media Matters for America"(26 September 2017)
2017

Jeffrey Tucker photo

“In the dynamic of today’s campus life, anti-racist codes are not really about enforcing a kind of social etiquette, universally applied. They are about power exercised by some over others.”

Jeffrey Tucker (1963) American writer

Source: Spooks and Speech Controls, archive.lewrockwell.com, 2016-05-22 http://archive.lewrockwell.com/orig/tucker4.html,

“During campus protests of the 1960s, Sidney Morgenbesser was hit on the head by police. When asked whether he had been treated unfairly or unjustly, he responded that it was "unjust, but not unfair. It was unjust because they hit me over the head, but not unfair because they hit everyone else over the head.””

Sidney Morgenbesser (1921–2004) American philosopher

The Independent, The Independent, Professor Sidney Morgenbesser: Philosopher celebrated for his withering New York Jewish humour http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/professor-sidney-morgenbesser-550224.html, 6 August 2004. Obituaries – Sidney Morgenbesser, 82, Kibitzing Philosopher, Dies http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/04/obituaries/04morgenbesser.html. The New York Times (September 8, 2004). Some of his students then argued that it may have been unjust, because he had not been proven guilty, but it was not unfair because the others were treated in the same way. The Times, Sidney Morgenbesser: Erudite and influential American linguistic philosopher with the analytical acuity of Spinoza and the blunt wit of Groucho Marx https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sidney-morgenbesser-5cz8gg8qfvm, September 8, 2004. This alternative version is sometimes attributed to Morgenbesser himself.

Steve Jobs photo
Dana Gioia photo
Jack Kerouac photo
George W. Bush photo

“I'm fortunate to know many of the trustees. Well, for example I'm good friends with the Chairman, Mike Boone. And there’s one trustee I know really well, a proud graduate of the SMU Class of 1968 who went on to become our nation’s greatest First Lady. Do me a favor and don’t tell Mother. I know how much the trustees love and care for this great university. I see it firsthand when I attend the Bring-Your-Spouse-Night Dinners. I also get to drop by classes on occasion. I am really impressed by the intelligence and energy of the SMU faculty. I want to thank you for your dedication and thank you for sharing your knowledge with your students. To reach this day, the graduates have had the support of loving families. Some of them love you so much they are watching from overflow sites across campus. I congratulate the parents who have sacrificed to make this moment possible. It is a glorious day when your child graduates from college — and a really great day for your bank account. I know the members of the Class of 2015 will join me in thanking you for your love and your support. Most of all, I congratulate the members of the Class of 2015. You worked hard to reach this milestone. You leave with lifelong friends and fond memories. You will always remember how much you enjoyed the right to buy a required campus meal plan. You'll remember your frequent battles with the Park ‘N’ Pony Office. And you may or may not remember those productive nights at the Barley House.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2010s, 2015, Remarks at the SMU 100th Spring Commencement (May 2015)

Alan Charles Kors photo
Christopher Isherwood photo
John F. Kennedy photo
C. N. R. Rao photo
Rousas John Rushdoony photo
John Hospers photo

“A fascist is a student who, seeing the representatives of a chemical industry recruiting on campus, cries, ‘Let's chase the bastard off! We have the right to free speech but he doesn't!”

John Hospers (1918–2011) American philosopher and politician

Source: Libertarianism: A Political Philosophy for Tomorrow, (1971), p. 39

Amy Schumer photo

“I'm the last person he called that night. I wonder, how many girls didn't answer before he got to fat freshman me? Am I in his phone as Schumer? Probably. But I was here, and I wanted to be held and touched and felt desired, despite everything. I wanted to be with him. I imagined us on campus together, holding hands, proving, "Look! I am lovable! And this cool older guy likes me!"”

Amy Schumer (1981) American comedian and actor

I can't be the troll doll I'm afraid I've become.
Ms. Foundation for Women’s Gloria Awards and Gala [Vulture, http://www.vulture.com/2014/05/read-amy-schumers-ms-gala-speech.html, May 2014, Read Amy Schumer’s Powerful Speech About Confidence, Jennifer, Vineyard]

“In our online descriptions and program literature we describe the cloisters as a public sphere for networked interaction, the gathering place for students, professors, and librarians engaged in planning, evaluating, or reviewing the efforts of research and study utilizing the whole range of technologies of literacy. We go further and describe the task of the cloisters as to "channel flows of research, learning and teaching between the increasingly networked world of the library and the intimacy and engagement of our classrooms and other campus spaces". There we continue to explore the "collectible object", which I tentatively described in Othermindedness in terms of maintaining an archive of "the successive choices, the errors and losses, of our own human community" and suggesting that what constitutes the collectible object is the value which suffuses our choices. It seemed to me then that electronic media are especially suited to tracking such "changing change".
I think it still seems so to me now but I do fear we have lost track of the beauty and nimbleness of new media in representing and preserving the meaning-making quotidian, the ordinary mindfulness which makes human life possible and valuable.
It is interesting, I think, that recounting and rehearsing this notion leaves this interview layered and speckled with (self) quotations, documentations, implicit genealogies, images, and traditions of continuity, change, and difference. Perhaps the most quoted line of afternoon over the years has been the sentence "There is no simple way to say this."”

Michael Joyce (1945) American academic and writer

The same is true of any attempt to describe the way in which the collectible object participates in (I use this word as a felicitous shorthand for the complex of ideas involved in what I called "representing and preserving the meaning-making quotidian" above) the library as living archive.
An interview with Michael Joyce and review of Liam’s Going at Trace Online Writing Centre Archive (2 December 2002) http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk/review/index.cfm?article=33

“Half the campus was designed by Bottom the Weaver, half by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; Benton had been endowed with one to begin with, and had smiled and sweated and and spoken for the other. A visitor looked under black beams, through leaded casements (past apple boughs, past box, past chairs like bath-tubs on broomsticks) to a lawn ornamented with one of the statues of David Smith; in the months since the figure had been put in its place a shrike had deserted for it a neighboring thorn tree, and an archer had skinned her leg against its farthest spike. On the table in the President’s waiting-room there were copies of Town and Country, the Journal of the History of Ideas, and a small magazine—a little magazine—that had no name. One walked by a mahogany hat-rack, glanced at the coat of arms on an umbrella-stand, and brushed with one’s sleeve something that gave a ghostly tinkle—four or five black and orange ellipsoids, set on grey wires, trembled in the faint breeze of the air-conditioning unit: a mobile. A cloud passed over the sun, and there came trailing from the gymnasium, in maillots and blue jeans, a melancholy procession, four dancers helping to the infirmary a friend who had dislocated her shoulder in the final variation of The Eye of Anguish.”

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 1: “The President, Mrs., and Derek Robbins”, p. 3; opening paragraph of novel

George W. Bush photo
Mario Savio photo
Stanley A. McChrystal photo
Camille Paglia photo

“Running to Mommy and Daddy on the campus grievance committee is unworthy of strong women.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), Rape and Modern Sex War, p. 53

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

George Wallace photo

“No matter how dynamic a campus work, unless a whole church is "totally committed," the campus ministry's impact would be limited.”

Kip McKean (1954) minister

http://www.kipmckean.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/Revolution_through_Restoration_1_2_3.pdf, Revolution Through Restoration, 1992.
Revolution Through Restoration (1992-2002)

David Brooks photo
A. Wayne Wymore photo

“After earning the PhD degree and acquiring some relatively extensive experience in digital computers… It was time to leave the University. The result of an extensive search for the right job was a family move to Arlington Heights, Illinois, where it was a short commute to the Research Laboratories of the Pure Oil Company at Crystal Lake. I was given the title of Mathematical and Computer Consultant. The Labs were set in a beautiful campus, the professional personnel were eager to learn what I had to teach and to include me in many interesting projects where my knowledge and skills could be put to good use. I was encouraged to initiate my own program of research. I went to work with enthusiasm.
The corporate headquarters of Pure Oil were located in down town Chicago. Pure Oil had been trying to install an IBM 705 computer system for all their accounting needs including calculation of all data necessary for the management of exploration, drilling, refining and distribution of oil products and even royalties to shareholders in oil wells. Typical for those early days, the programming team was in deep difficulties and needed help; they lacked adequate resources and suitable training. The Executive Vice President of Pure Oil, when he heard that there was a computer expert already on the payroll at the Crystal Lake lab, ended our family blissful dream and I was reassigned to the down town office.”

A. Wayne Wymore (1927–2011) American mathematician

Systems Movement: Autobiographical Retrospectives (2004)

“It is the Soldier, not the minister, who has given us freedom of religion.
It is the Soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press.
It is the Soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the Soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us freedom to protest.
It is the Soldier, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial.
It is the Soldier, not the politician, who has given us the right to vote.
It is the Soldier who salutes the flag,
Who serves beneath the flag,
And whose coffin is draped by the flag,
Who allows the protester to burn the flag.”

Published on the George Patton Historical Society http://www.pattonhq.com/koreamemorial.html website. Also attributed through reading in the U.S. House http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/R?r108:FLD001:H01969.
This poem is often attributed to Fr. Dennis Edward O'Brien. Father O'Brien apparently sent the poem to Dear Abbey, who incorrectly attributed it to him. Before his death, he was always quick to say that he had not written the verse.

George Will photo
Noam Chomsky photo

“Nothing should be done to impede people from teaching and doing their research even if at that very moment it was being used to massacre and destroy. […] the radical students and I wanted to keep the labs on campus, on the principle that what is going to be going on anyway ought to be open and above board, so that people would know what is happening and act accordingly.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

referring to 1969 https://web.archive.org/web/20031106175309/http://cognet.mit.edu/library/books/chomsky/chomsky/4/11.html
Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994, Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent, 1992

Pat Conroy photo
John F. Kennedy photo

“This State, this city, this campus, have stood long for both human rights and human enlightenment — and let that forever be true. This Nation is now engaged in a continuing debate about the rights of a portion of its citizens. This Nation is now engaged in a continuing debate about the rights of a portion of its citizens. That will go on, and those rights will expand until the standard first forged by the Nation's founders has been reached, and all Americans enjoy equal opportunity and liberty under law. But this Nation was not founded solely on the principle of citizens' rights. Equally important, though too often not discussed, is the citizen's responsibility. For our privileges can be no greater than our obligations. The protection of our rights can endure no longer than the performance of our responsibilities. Each can be neglected only at the peril of the other. I speak to you today, therefore, not of your rights as Americans, but of your responsibilities. They are many in number and different in nature. They do not rest with equal weight upon the shoulders of all. Equality of opportunity does not mean equality of responsibility. All Americans must be responsible citizens, but some must be more responsible than others, by virtue of their public or their private position, their role in the family or community, their prospects for the future, or their legacy from the past. Increased responsibility goes with increased ability, for "of those to whom much is given, much is required."”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Address at Vanderbilt University

Naomi Klein photo
Christopher Hitchens photo
David Brooks photo
Michelle Obama photo

“My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my "Blackness" than ever before. I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my White professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong. Regardless of the circumstances under which I interact with Whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be Black first and a student second.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

" Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community http://pt.scribd.com/doc/2305083/Princeton-Educated-Blacks-and-the-Black-Community", senior thesis, Princeton University (1985), p. 14-15 quoted in "Michelle Obama thesis was on racial divide" by Jeffrey Ressner at Politico.com (23 February 2008) http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=42FC5818-3048-5C12-005E33B3C0F4E64B
1980s

Michelle Obama photo

“See, the truth is that if Princeton hadn’t found my brother as a basketball recruit, and if I hadn’t seen that he could succeed on a campus like that, it never would have occurred to me to apply to that school — never. And I know that there are so many kids out there just like me — kids who have a world of potential, but maybe their parents never went to college or maybe they’ve never been encouraged to believe they could succeed there.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

Statements proceeding introduction of husband at College Opportunity Summit (16 January 2014) http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/01/16/remarks-president-and-first-lady-college-opportunity-summit
2010s

Roger Ebert photo

“In April of 1959, ten of this country's leading scholars forgathered on the campus of Purdue University to discuss the nature of information and the nature of decision… What interests do these men have in common?… To answer these questions it is necessary to view the changing aspect of the scientific approach to epistemology, and the striking progress which has been wrought in the very recent past. The decade from 1940 to 1950 witnessed the operation of the first stored- program digital computer. The concept of information was quantified, and mathematical theories were developed for communication (Shannon) and decision (Wald). Known mathematical techniques were applied to new and important fields, as the techniques of complex- variable theory to the analysis of feedback systems and the techniques of matrix theory to the analysis of systems under multiple linear constraints. The word "cybernetics" was coined, and with it came the realization of the many analogies between control and communication in men and in automata. New terms like "operations research" and "system engineering" were introduced; despite their occasional use by charlatans, they have signified enormous progress in the solution of exceedingly complex problems, through the application of quantitative ness and objectivity.”

Robert E. Machol (1917–1998) American systems engineer

Source: Information and Decision Processes (1960), p. vii

Camille Paglia photo
Pat Conroy photo
Jack Valenti photo

“By summer of 1966, the national scene was marked by insurrection on the campus, riots in the streets, rise in women's liberation, protest of the young, doubts about the institution of marriage, abandonment of old guiding slogans, and the crumbling of social traditions.”

Jack Valenti (1921–2007) President of the MPAA

The Voluntary Movie Rating System (2004)
Context: By summer of 1966, the national scene was marked by insurrection on the campus, riots in the streets, rise in women's liberation, protest of the young, doubts about the institution of marriage, abandonment of old guiding slogans, and the crumbling of social traditions. It would have been foolish to believe that movies, that most creative of art forms, could have remained unaffected by the change and torment in our society.
The result of all this was the emergence of a "new kind" of American movie — frank and open, and made by filmmakers subject to very few self-imposed restraints.

Bono photo

“I know idealism is not playing on the radio right now, you don't see it on TV, irony is on heavy rotation, the knowingness, the smirk, the tired joke. I've tried them all out but I'll tell you this, outside this campus — and even inside it — idealism is under siege beset by materialism, narcissism and all the other isms of indifference.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

PENN Address (2004)
Context: I know idealism is not playing on the radio right now, you don't see it on TV, irony is on heavy rotation, the knowingness, the smirk, the tired joke. I've tried them all out but I'll tell you this, outside this campus — and even inside it — idealism is under siege beset by materialism, narcissism and all the other isms of indifference. Baggism, Shaggism. Raggism. Notism, graduationism, chismism, I don't know. Where's John Lennon when you need him?

Reza Pahlavi photo
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex photo

“It’s surreal being back because I haven’t been back since I graduated, and as I am walking around I remember things like the schlep of getting to South Campus from up north. The 24-hour Burger King also definitely helped me put on the Freshman Fifteen.”

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (1981) American former actress and member by marriage of the British royal family

Speaking in 2014 on her first visit back to Northwestern University since she graduated in 2003 (a promotional visit for Suits) as quoted in Northwestern Now, a university publication http://archive.today/Vj26m
Prior to royal marriage

Alex Salmond photo

“David Mundell MP said it would take a miracle to save Glasgow University participation in the Crichton campus. It is now official - miracles happen in an SNP run Scotland!”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Principles and Priorities : Programme for Government (September 5, 2007)