Alexander Payne Quotes

We in universities are not in the democracy business. What we do, when we're doing it, is teach and learn.

I did a lot of my writing as though I was an academic, doing some piece of research as perfectly as possible.

I'm a highly flawed individual, as we all are, and because I was raised by Jesuits, I'm constantly, 'What is it about me and what I can do to be better?'

Within the confines of the lecture hall, no other virtue exists but plain intellectual integrity.

The Jesuits do not educate, they domesticate.

It is not the least service which a college or university may render to those under its instruction, to habituate them to looking not only patiently but methodically on both sides, before adopting any conclusion upon controverted issues.

Academe is increasingly populated by people who, having neither an inclination nor an aptitude for scholarship, have no business being there.

A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas.

It was Neuberger who first taught me how to do research, both technically and as a way of life, and I owe much to him.

The modern mind tends to be more and more critical and analytical in spirit, hence it must devise for itself an engine of expression which is logically defensible at every point and which tends to correspond to the rigorous spirit of modern science.

I love academics, theory and all that. I love and admire that and try to do as much reading as I can.

I did go through graduate school and I like to do research, to create something that has a certain objective solidity. The same thing influences my fiction to some degree, because, you know, my fiction is often based on history that I've read.

My job is to write opinions. I decide cases and write opinions. It is not to respond to idiocy and critics who make statements that are unfounded. That doesn't mean that people shouldn't have constructive criticisms, but it should be constructive.

Catholic schools prepare every student to meet the challenges of their future by developing their mind, yes, but also their body and their soul and spirit.

I'm instinctively cautious because I'm an academic.

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 studied English at Princeton in the early eighties in what I consider a period of high obscurity. Professors and students ran around discussing the work of critics and philosophers that I doubt they'd read or understood.

However, I must not indulge in homespun wisdom here before so distinguished an assembly, especially as I am to be followed by a representative of science.

Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.

If I read the word 'problematize' one more time, I'm going to vomit.

There is only one justification for universities, as distinguished from trade schools. They must be centers of criticism.

Whatever universe a professor believes in must at any rate be a universe that lends itself to lengthy discourse. A universe definable in two sentences is something for which the professorial intellect has no use. No faith in anything of that cheap kind!

My own ideals for the university are those of a genuine democracy and serious scholarship. These two, indeed, seem to go together.

Was I going to remain an academic, sitting in an ivory tower criticizing things? Or was I going to do something as an engaged citizen.

And seek for truth in the groves of Academy