Robert C. Merton Quotes

I was on the mathematics faculty at M.I.T. from 1951 through until I resigned in the spring of 1959.

I have been a Professor Emeritus since 1958, and have continued my scientific studies.

I could have seen myself going into academia, but I don't love it; I just like it.

I am both delighted and honored to return to the University of Chicago as a Distinguished Senior Fellow and embark on this new journey with the students, faculty, and wider Chicago community.

When I was in grad school, I wanted to be in academia forever.

When I'm done playing basketball, I want do something bigger. I'm working on my doctorate right now at Barry University in Florida.

I wasn't tempted to go into academia for a second.

But the idea that I should be a teacher and a researcher of some sort did not vary over the years.

I would have liked to have been a professor of sociology.

I then moved to the University of Western Ontario where I was made a full professor in 1985.

I was promoted associate professor in early 1970 and full professor in October of the same year. I spent the two spring semesters of 1972 and 1974 as visiting professor at Harvard University, giving lectures and directing a research project.

One can't write without having read - you have to read before beginning to write - and universities offer a very good opportunity to read.

I am presently in my thirteenth year of teaching a graduate course at the University of Southern California.

Now the master paid a number of visits to England and, as a Cambridge man, it is a source of pride that he taught there for a longer period than elsewhere in my country.

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.

Between being governor and part of the Senate, one of the things I did was I held a chair at the business school at my alma mater, Indiana University. And I'd go to lecture the graduates, and I loved that, answering their questions. It was real; it was tangible, and it was making a difference every day.

I was a history major at Princeton University; I took exams in war and diplomacy, and I find those things very fascinating.

I am a professor at Stanford; I am a happy professor at Stanford. That's where I'm staying.

I worked at Columbia University's School of Public Health.

I went to school at the University of Rhode Island and pursued a degree in journalism, which is a little bit ironic.

I was at Sussex University studying English lit and philosophy, I had two essays due in and three seminars that day, and at the same time I was messaging my manager because I'd just started to put together the pieces of like, 'Wow. I really don't want to be doing any essays anymore. Why don't I just give this music thing a go?'

Many policemen have not completed their education, and the university can help them on this front. Education will enable them to speak well and politely to the people.

I was close with some of my old professors.

I went to Drexel University, majored in computer science. Drexel has a great program - they call it co-op - but its, like, mandatory to graduate to do internships. I loved it because it helped me figure out very quickly that I didn't really want to be a programmer.

It's one of the tragedies of the modern university that it offers little space to generalists.