Dissertation Quotes

• The first point was we wanted power to determine our own destiny in our own black community. And what we had done is, we wanted to write a program that was straightforward to the people. We didn't want to give a long dissertation.

  Bobby Seale

  Writing, Destiny, Long

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• I spent every night until four in the morning on my dissertation, until I came to the point when I could not write another word, not even the next letter. I went to bed. Eight o'clock the next morning I was up writing again.

  Abraham Pais

  Morning, Writing, Night

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• My early work and publications centered around expanding on the analysis of life insurance in my dissertation and its relationship to investment banking.

  Douglass North

  Relationship, Analysis, Banking

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• An American cannot converse, but he can discuss, and his talk falls into a dissertation. He speaks to you as if he was addressing a meeting; and if he should chance to become warm in the discussion, he will say 'Gentlemen' to the person with whom he is conversing.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  War, Fall, Gentleman

  Alexis de Tocqueville (2001). “Democracy in America”, p.102, Penguin

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• I am so fond of tea that I could write a whole dissertation on its virtues. It comforts and enlivens without the risks attendant on spirituous liquors. Gentle herb! Let the florid grape yield to thee. Thy soft influence is a more safe inspirer of social joy.

  James Boswell

  Writing, Yield, Joy

  James Boswell (1956). “London Journal, 1762-1763, as First Published in 1950 from the Original Manuscript”

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• I once asked a young dissertation writer whether her suddenly grayed hair was due to ill health or personal tragedy; she answered: “It was the footnotes”.

  Joanna Russ

  Hair, Ill Health, Tragedy

  Joanna Russ (1983). “How to Suppress Women's Writing”, p.137, University of Texas Press

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• I hate set dissertations,--and above all things in the world, 'tis one of the silliest things in one of them, to darken your hypothesis by placing a number of tall, opake words, one before another, in a right line, betwixt your own and your readers conception.

  Laurence Sterne

  Hate, Numbers, Obscurity

  Laurence Sterne (1849). “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman”, p.151

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• If you don't have the willpower to stop eating carbs, you won't have the willpower to do a dissertation. #truth.

  Geoffrey Miller

  Willpower, Eating, Carbs

  "Geoffrey Miller, Visiting NYU Professor, Slammed For Fat-Shaming Obese PhD Applicants" By Meredith Bennett-Smith, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 4, 2013.

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• I did my dissertation on Kafka.

  Jessie Ware

  "Jessie Ware: 'I'm such a bully about food'". Interview with John Hind, www.theguardian.com. January 19, 2013.

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• I said to Mr. Pavarotti once ... a marvelous man and a great artist ... I said to him ... "Maestro, I'm having trouble closing out a note so that it's almost as thin as a butter knife ... finish it out quietly like that." I said, "I have trouble doing that. What do you think I should do?" He said, "Justa close up your mouth." That's all he said, and I fell on the floor. I thought he was gonna give me a dissertation.

  Frank Sinatra

  Artist, Men, Thinking

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• In poetry, and in my study in graduate school, I was drawn to a particular poet, Theodore Roethke. I did a dissertation on "The Evolution of Matter and Spirit in the Poetry of Theodore Roethke" for my Ph.D.

  Frederick Lenz

  School, Matter, Rama

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• nothing is so pleasant ... as to display your worldly wisdom in epigram and dissertation, but it is a trifle tedious to hear another person display theirs.

  Ouida

  Wit, Trifles, Bores

  Ouida (1870). “Puck: His Vicissitudes, Adventures, Observations, Conclusions, Friendships, and Philosophies”, p.131

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• It has been said in praise of some men, that they could take whole hours together upon anything; but it must be owned to the honor of the other sex that there are many among them who can talk whole hours together upon nothing. I have known a woman branch out into a long extempore dissertation on the edging of a petticoat, and chide her servant for breaking a china cup, in all the figures of rhetoric.

  Joseph Addison

  Sex, Men, Talking

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• This is the last sentence of my dissertation: "What is soul in music if not powerfully embodied human presence?"

  Vijay Iyer

  Soul

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• And if something should be found, particularly in the first part of the dissertation, that one is generally not accustomed to come across in scholarly writings, the reader must forgive my jocundity, just as I, in order to lighten the burden, sometimes sing at my work.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Work, Writing, Order

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• The true source of our sufferings has been our timidity.

  John Adams

  Suffering, Source, Has Beens

  John Adams (2001). “The Political Writings of John Adams”, p.15, Regnery Publishing

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• Didier once told me, in a rambling, midnight dissertation, that a dream is the place where a wish and a fear meet. When the wish and the fear are exactly the same, he said, we call the dream a nightmare.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Dream, Wish, Rambling

  Gregory David Roberts (2004). “Shantaram: A Novel”, p.137, Macmillan

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• The writer who cannot sometimes throw away a thought about which another man would have written dissertations, without worry whether or not the reader will find it, will never become a great writer.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Writing, Men, Worry

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• History is life; he who has not lived, or has lived only enough to write a doctoral dissertation, is too inexperienced with life to write good history.

  Louis Moreau Gottschalk

  Writing, History, Enough

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• A monumental decision such as starting a family requires persuasive dissertations, licences, spreadsheets and field research. That's what I assumed until one night when we were lying in bed and, if I recall correctly, I asked Tracy if we were ready to have a family now, and she said sure. That was it.

  Ryan Knighton

  Lying, Night, Decision

  Ryan Knighton (2010). “C'mon Papa: Dispatches from a Dad in the Dark”, p.9, Knopf Canada

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• Dissertations are not finished; they are abandoned.

  Fred Brooks

  Abandoned, Finished

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• A PhD in Mathematics is three years of guessing it wrong, plus one week of getting it right and writing a dissertation.

  Keith Devlin

  Writing, Years, Three

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• My dissertation was on the idea of feminine-themed women's magazines, so like how the ideal woman is put across by women's magazines.

  Lauren Mayberry

  Ideas, Magazines, Feminine

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• It all started in India in the late 60s when I began helping my husband George, who was in the population field, evaluate the introduction of the intrauterine contraceptive device. At that time the IUD was considered to be the panacea for India's population problem. George's dissertation was focused on population and he became interested in the question of this new technology and how people were responding to it.

  Ruth Simmons

  Husband, Technology, Population Problem

  Source: quod.lib.umich.edu

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• We're artists. We cry out to be exploited on some level. Write a dissertation on my work. Write a biography about me.

  Scott McClanahan

  Writing, Artist, Levels

  Source: www.thefader.com

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