Robert Darnton Quotes

Even as I pursued a doctorate in the history of ideas in my native Denmark, I realized I had neither the encyclopedic training nor the passion for cool logic - not to mention the nerve - to follow in the footsteps of classical liberal philosophers and economists such as Robert Nozick, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman.

Without philosophy, history is always for me dead and dumb.

Besides numerous science courses, I had the opportunity to study philosophy, the history of architecture, economics, and Russian history in courses taught by extraordinarily knowledgeable professors.

Lastly, literature and philosophy both allow past idols to be resurrected with a frequency which would be truly distressing to a sober scientist.

Let philosophy resolutely aim to be as scientific as possible, but let her not forget her strong kinship with literature.

I studied history and English in college, got a master's in writing, but I was always sort of an autodidact in science.

I went to Princeton from Amherst, where I split my interests between mathematics and philosophy.

I think of an intellectual as just being bookish, being interested in history books, utopian ideas, that kind of thing.

I would not say that I was, these days, a 'student' of philosophy, although in my youth I was quite deeply involved with certain aspects of the British pragmatists.

I'm taking a philosophy class and regretting it with everything in me. I'm taking one college class per semester. Philosophy is studying what you already know and dismantling it. I thought it would be right up my alley. I can't tell you how much it's not me.

A Socrates in every classroom.

If I can't find a project that I'm really interested in, I'll just go back to college where I've been studying art history and French. I'm also going to study English and philosophy - the whole curriculum!

If history, philosophy and so on vanish from academic life, what they leave in their wake may be a technical training facility or corporate research institute. But it will not be a university in the classical sense of the term, and it would be deceptive to call it one.

I have a long-term interest in the humanities.

I had a liberal arts education at Amherst College where I had two majors, mathematics and philosophy.

I can remember picking up weighty tomes on the history of science and the history of philosophy and reading those when I was small.

I am probably a pseudo-intellectual.

The history of philosophy is not, like the history of the sciences, to be studied with the intellect alone. That which is receptive in us and that which impinges upon us from history is the reality of man's being, unfolding itself in thought.

I'd like to do policy and I'd like to do philosophy, I'd like to be able to get into the depth, into the meat of the argument - that's the kind of stuff I want to do.

Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.

I have a degree in European history, which didn't necessarily have any direct impact on my career, but I'm grateful I studied something other than acting in college.

I'm double majoring in social studies - which is sociology, anthropology, economics, and philosophy - and African-American studies.

Intellectuals are people who manage the world in their head. They look at life and try to see some kind of truth, and if they cannot find it, they attempt to create it.

I grew up in this house of intellectuals, and for me, it wasn't, like, a negative thing. And what I've discovered is, for a lot of people, it is. But I think knowing history, liking to talk about ideas - like, I just genuinely like to geek out and go on these intellectual thought journeys.

I got my degree in philosophy and English literature; those were my main interests.