Noam Chomsky Quotes

In the sciences particularly the large public universities must and do take an active role in fostering creativity and independence; otherwise the fields will wither, and along with them even the aspirations of wealth and power.

They, students have a degree of freedom that nobody else has.

It is easy to carp at colleges, and the college, if he will wait for it, will have its own turn. Genius exists there also, but will not answer a call of a committee of the House of Commons. It is rare, precious, eccentric, and darkling.

The Wellcome Foundation offered me the chance to establish a small academic research unit, modestly funded, but with total independence. The real opportunity, however, came from King's College, London.

Yeah, but now suddenly - you know, universities are notoriously market oriented, too.

No state legislature ever built a great university.

For one, thing, the media are dominated by the irreligious. So are universities.

The Weizmann Institute showed me respect and didn't require many administrative tasks, so I was quite independent. I did what I wanted.

A university's essential character is that of being a center of free inquiry and criticism - a thing not to be sacrificed for anything else.

I found university a little dispiriting. I thought I would enter the great halls of Plato, but instead I entered the halls of an intellectual sausage factory. I wanted to do something not on the main course, and chose the environment.

I was fortunate in that I attended university in Canada in the early 1970s when you could take a true liberal arts degree with no programmes, majors or minors.

Universities are in a position where they can think very creatively.

I love college life.

I didn't really escape that gravity until I moved 300 miles south to go to college at 18, where authorship no longer seemed something liable to induce vengeful punishment.

Full disclosure: I went to university as an eager young feminist for many reasons - to get away from my parents, to soak up literature and knowledge, to cease being a child, to expand my mind and my world.

A university is a place that is established and will function for the benefit of society provided it is a center of independent thought.

The University is not engaged in making ideas safe for students. It is engaged in making students safe for ideas. Thus it permits the freest expression of views before students, trusting to their good sense in passing judgment on these views. Only in this way can it best serve American democracy.

A University with sectarian professorships becomes, of course, a sectarian monopoly: with professorships of rival sects, it would be an arena of Theological Gladiators. Without any such professorships, it may incur, for a time at least, the imputation of irreligious tendencies, if not designs. The last difficulty was thought more manageable than either of the others….there seems to be no alternative but between a public University without a theological professorship, and sectarian seminaries without a University

Any nation wishing to promote national education could not expect to achieve its aims until it took it control of education in its own hands

If they want to go to college and then leave, let them leave when they want to leave. Why would we force a kid to stay? 'Well - it's good for the game?' It's about these kids and their families.

I thought, 'If I go to uni, I can read and watch people and take many different subjects - take philosophy modules - and have time to travel in the summers,' which I did. I thought, 'I hope this will make me a better actor,' and it did.

I love being a Duke student, and continuing to be part of the university culture is something I don't take for granted.

It was the most exciting thing to leave secondary school and go to college, to have that freedom to study whatever I wanted.

I am very proud of my three years there, of having decided to go to Manchester first - at 17, it was the perfect time for me to leave home because it helped make me as a person.

Public universities are the lifeblood of modern democracies.