Scholarly Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old scholarly quotes, scholarly sayings, and scholarly proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.

Scholastic learning and polemical divinity retarded the growth of all true knowledge. David Hume
There is more scholarly work on the life-habits of the dung fly than on existential risks [to humanity]. Nick Bostrom
Academic work is one of those fields which contain a pearl so precious that it is worth while to sell all our possessions, keeping nothing for ourselves, in order to be able to acquire it. Simone Weil
But I do say that educated and scholarly men, if they're brilliant and creative to begin with "which, unfortunately, is rarely the case" tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are merely brilliant and creative. They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the end. J. D. Salinger
Most scholarly books we read for the information or insight they contain. But some we return to simply for the pleasure of the author's company. Michael Dirda
The course of every intellectual, if he pursues his journey long and unflinchingly enough, ends in the obvious, from which the non-intellectuals have never stirred. Aldous Huxley
An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows. Dwight D. Eisenhower
One cannot demand of a scholar that he show himself a scholar everywhere in society, but the whole tenor of his behavior must none the less betray the thinker, he must always be instructive, his way of judging a thing must even in the smallest matters be such that people can see what it will amount to when, quietly and self-collected, he puts this power to scholarly use. G. C. Lichtenberg
In general, when reading a scholarly critic, one profits more from his quotations than from his comments. W.H. Auden
Life at university, with its intellectual and inconclusive discussions at a postgraduate level is on the whole a bad training for the real world. Only men of very strong character surmount this handicap. Paul Chambers
It's the intellectual who transforms the concept of the world into the problem of meaning. Max Weber
Too academic an education can inhibit the workings of the creative mind. Margaret Drabble
Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them. Samuel Butler
Scholarly talks and discussion require manner, virtue, and referral. Otherwise, the outcome holds nothing. Ehsan Sehgal
As a scholarly discipline, economics has always suffered from physics envy. Robert Kuttner
Almost all scholarly research carries practical and political implications. Better that we should spell these out ourselves than leave that task to people with a vested interest in stressing only some of the implications and falsifying others. The idea that academics should remain "above the fray" only gives ideologues license to misuse our work. Stephanie Coontz
The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts but learning how to make facts live. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
An intellectual is a man who doesn't know how to park a bike. Spiro T. Agnew
The intellectual is different from the ordinary man, but only in certain sections of his personality, and even then not all the time. George Orwell
All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called 'Facts'. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain. Thomas Hobbes
An academic dialect is perfected when its terms are hard to understand and refer only to one another. Mason Cooley
The usual duty of the “intellectual” is to argue for complexity and to insist that phenomena in the world of ideas should not be sloganized or reduced to easily repeated formulae. Christopher Hitchens
The aim of the scholarly editor is not to produce the the easiest text for the reader, but to get as near as he can to the text of the author. Frederic G. Kenyon
The flame of knowledge enkindled in the mind itself can make a person scholarly. Rig Veda
Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst...They are for nothing but to inspire. Ralph Waldo Emerson
The scientific and scholarly community is marked by the belief that the truth is to be found in all; none can claim it as their monopoly. John Charles Polanyi
A genius is someone who takes a complex thing and makes it look simple. An academic does the opposite. Robert Fanney
There is no single truth, but each of the scholarly disciplines has methods which lead one ever closer to the truth. Howard Gardner
Don't appear so scholarly, pray. Humanize your talk, and speak to be understood. Do you think a Greek name gives more weight to your reasons? Moliere