Harvard Quotes

• A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.

  Herman Melville

  College, Whales, Yale

  Moby Dick ch. 24 (1851)

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• If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

  Derek Bok

  Inspirational, Funny, Graduation

  Attributed in Paul Dickson, The Official Rules (1978). An earlier occurrence, without attribution to any individual, was in Wash. Post, 6 Oct. 1975.

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• I held a conference in Harvard where Americans said they didn't believe in risk. They thought it was just European hysteria. Then the terrorist attacks happened and there was a complete conversion. Suddenly terrorism was the central risk.

  Ulrich Beck

  Believe, Hysteria, Risk

  "Risky business". Interview with Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. February 11, 2006.

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• A rich poet from Harvard has no sense in his mind, except the aesthetic.

  Beatrice Wood

  Mind, Rich, Poet

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• There is a neurologist, a woman over at Harvard who wanted me to come talk to them, and in France I have a lot of readers in the sciences. I can't tell you why.

  Jim Harrison

  Literature, France, Reader

  Interview with Robert Birnbaum, themorningnews.org.

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• The Harvard Law states: Under controlled conditions of light, temperature, humidity, and nutrition, the organism will do as it damn well pleases.

  Larry Wall

  Light, Law, Temperature

  Usenet article, 1997.

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• As a journalist I'm comfortable doing library research, and I did a lot! I had a fellowship at Radcliff for a year which gave me access to the Harvard system.

  Anita Diament

  Years, Library Research, Doing Me

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• It might be said now that I have the best of both worlds. A Harvard education and a Yale degree.

  John F. Kennedy

  Inspirational, Funny, Graduation

  Yale University Commencement Address, delivered 11 June 1962

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• Harvard is first and foremost a university and not a consulting operation, and our job here is to teach and to research and to create knowledge on Asia in conjunction and in cooperation with scholars as well as with political, intellectual, and cultural leaders in Asia.

  William C. Kirby

  Jobs, Leader, Political

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• That was one of the big problems when I was at Harvard studying music. We had to write choral pieces in the style of Brahms or Mendelssohn, which was distressing because in the end you realized how good Brahms is, and how bad you are.

  Elliott Carter

  Writing, Style, Pieces

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• The first months at Harvard were more than challenging, as I came to the realization that the humanities could be genuinely interesting, and, in fact, given the weaknesses of my background, very difficult.

  Philip Warren Anderson

  Interesting, Challenges, Humanity

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• If Moses had gone to Harvard Law School and spent three years working on the Hill, he would have written the Ten Commandments with three exceptions and a saving clause.

  Charles Morgan

  School, Years, Law

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• I had been offered fellowships to enter as a graduate student at either Harvard or Princeton. But the Princeton fellowship was somewhat more generous, since I had not actually won the Putnam competition... Thus Princeton became the choice for my graduate study location.

  John Forbes Nash

  Choices, Competition, Fellowship

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• I went to an all-girls pre school where everyone went off to Harvard or Yale, and I had zero interest in doing so. I think they thought I was on drugs. There was a neighboring all-boys school, so we'd get together and do dumb things. It was your typical Catholic-American upbringing.

  Katherine Moennig

  Girl, Zero, School

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• We've had risk assessments performed by Harvard University, which said that even if we did have a small number of cases in this country that the likelihood of it spreading or getting into any kind of human health problem is very, very small.

  Ann Veneman

  Country, Small Numbers, Assessment

  "Agriculture chief: U.S. learned from British mad cow epidemic". www.cnn.com. December 31, 2003.

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• I left Princeton, but I graduated Harvard, in 1952.

  Harry Mathews

  Princeton, Left

  Interview with John Ashbery, www.dalkeyarchive.com. 1987.

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• You looked at Stanford or Harvard, or the University of Colorado, these were powerful engines just turning out people ready to create and grow businesses.

  John Hickenlooper

  Powerful, People, Colorado

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• Two young doctors - one from Harvard and the other from Dartmouth - invited me to go to Mecca in my husband's stead. And that is what helped put me back on track.

  Betty Shabazz

  Husband, Two, Doctors

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• I applied to American Repertory School up at Harvard at got in.

  Ajay Naidu

  School

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• When I was a graduate student, the leading spirits at Harvard were interested in the history of ideas.

  M. H. Abrams

  Inspirational, Funny, Graduation

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• I'm going to try to pull a Natalie Portman. Natalie went to Harvard while shooting 'Star Wars'. I don't know how she did it. I want to have lunch with her and ask her - that seems like a bunch of stress right there.

  Selena Gomez

  Stars, War, Stress

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• Harvard makes mistakes too, you know. Kissinger taught there.

  Woody Allen

  Mistake, Annie Hall, Taught

  Woody Allen, Marshall Brickman (2000). “Annie Hall: scénario bilingue”

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• These movies are like my kids. I just love them to death. Some of them go to Harvard and some of them can barely graduate high school.

  Barry Sonnenfeld

  Movie, School, Kids

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• In not having an appointment at Harvard, I'm in the company of a great many people whose work I admire tremendously, in particular women of color.

  Catharine MacKinnon

  Color, People, Great Men

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• I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Government, Boston, People

  "Goldstein: How Universities Killed Free Speech" by Lorrie Goldstein, torontosun.com. November 22, 2017.

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