Ivory Tower Quotes

• When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter.

  Logan Pearsall Smith

  Towers, Gutters, Idealism

  Afterthoughts (1931) "Other People"

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• I don't want to live in an ivory tower, being the songwriter who just turns inward.

  Billie Joe Armstrong

  Towers, Inward, Want

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• Smooth shapes are very rare in the wild but extremely important in the ivory tower and the factory.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Important, Towers, Shapes

  "A Theory of Roughness". Interview with John Brockman, www.edge.org. December 20, 2004.

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• An ivory tower is a fine place as long as the door is open.

  Walter Darby Bannard

  Doors, Long, Solitude

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• Policies that emanate from ivory towers often have an adverse impact on the people out in the field who are fighting the wars or bringing in the revenues.

  Colin Powell

  War, Fighting, Impact

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• If you shut yourself up disdainfully in your ivory tower and insist that you have your own conscience and are satisfied with its approval, it is because you know that everybody is criticizing you, condemning you, or laughing at you.

  Luigi Pirandello

  Laughing, Approval, Towers

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• Strategy should evolve out of the mud of the marketplace, not in the antiseptic environment of an ivory tower.

  Al Ries

  Towers, Mud, Environment

  Al Ries, Jack Trout (2006). “Marketing Warfare: 20th Anniversary Edition: Authors' Annotated Edition”, McGraw Hill Professional

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• Many live in the ivory tower called reality; they never venture on the open sea of thought.

  Francois Gautier

  Inspirational, Reality, Sea

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• The ivory tower of the artist may be the only stronghold left for human values, cultural treasures, man’s cult of beauty.

  Anais Nin

  Artist, Men, Towers

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• Programs, systems and methods sit well in the ivory towers of monasteries or in the wooden arms of icons. Head knowledge comes from the pages of a theology text. But the invitation to know God - truly know Him - is always an invitation to suffer. Not to suffer alone, but to suffer with Him.

  Joni Eareckson Tada

  Icons, Suffering, Towers

  Joni Eareckson Tada (2010). “When God Weeps: Why Our Sufferings Matter to the Almighty”, p.137, Zondervan

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• Great question in science - questions like the ones Herschel raised about the structure of the universe - are seldom answered by ivory-tower types engaging in pure thought. They are answered by people who are willing to get down into the trenches and grapple with nature. If that means casting your own telescope mirrors, as Herschel did, so be it.

  James Trefil

  Mean, Mirrors, People

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• The only refuge left to us was the poet's ivory tower, which we climbed, ever higher, to isolate ourselves from the mob.

  Gerard De Nerval

  Towers, Poet, Higher

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• For me or a Bruce Springsteen to sit up in our ivory towers and make comments about racism, well, were not really in it, are we?

  John Mellencamp

  Racism, Towers, Springsteen

  "John Mellencamp takes a hard look at race issues on Cuttin' Heads" by Eric Schumacher Rasmussen, www.mtv.com. October 15, 2001.

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• The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.

  W. H. Auden

  Men, Average, Towers

  W H Auden (1981). “Antæus”, Ecco Press

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• Authentic thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication. If it is true that thought has meaning only when generated by action upon the world, the subordination of students to teachers becomes impossible.

  Paulo Freire

  Teacher, Communication, Reality

  Paulo Freire, Elizabeth Galligan, Romelia Hurtado de Vivas (2008). “Pioneers in Education: Essays in Honor of Paulo Freire”, p.109, Nova Publishers

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• I think public intellectuals have a responsibility - to be self-critical on the one hand, to do serious, nuanced work rigorously executed; but to also be able to get off those perches and out of those ivory towers and speak to the real people who make decisions; to speak truth to power and the powerless with lucidity and eloquence.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Real, Responsibility, Thinking

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• It used to be that readers were relegated because they considered themselves far above society, and so the metaphor of the ivory tower developed. Now there's still this idea that the reader doesn't take part in the social game and in politics, the res publica, but for other reasons: he doesn't do it because he's not making any money.

  Alberto Manguel

  Games, Ideas, Towers

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• As much as we sometimes roll our eyes at the ivory-tower isolation of universities, they continue to serve as remarkable engines of innovation.

  Steven Johnson

  Eye, Innovation, Towers

  "Kevin Kelly and Steven Johnson on Where Ideas Come From". Interview with Kevin Kelly, www.wired.com. September 27, 2010.

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• That's a big part of being a designer now: going out, having dinners, meeting people. Being in an ivory tower, you can feel very removed.

  Joseph Altuzarra

  People, Towers, Going Out

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Ivory towers are as rare as bowling alleys in tribal cultures.

  Terry Eagleton

  Towers, Culture, Bowling

  "Why Marx Was Right". Book by Terry Eagleton, 2011.

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• Friedmans influence reaches far beyond the academic community and the world of economics. Rather than lock himself in an ivory tower, he has joined the fray to fight for the survival of this great country of ours.

  William E. Simon

  Country, Fighting, Community

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• Only recently serious research into the relationship between photography and art has taken place. Why has it been so long in coming ? In some respects historical research is analogous with that of science. The bringing to light of factual material and the development of ideas is to a large extent cumulative. But when artists themselves were, from about 1910, beginning to tear down the bastions protecting Art in its ivory tower, questioning the idea of Art with a capital 'A', photography was inevitably to assume a new stature both in the eyes of artists and the public, too.

  Aaron Scharf

  Photography, Art, Taken

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• Jan built herself an ivory tower to keep the wolves out; she never dreamed they were already inside.

  Mira Grant

  Ivory, Towers, Built

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• I don't ascribe to the idea of the ivory tower composer who sits alone in a room composing his masterpieces and then comes down from Mount Sinai with the tablets. It doesn't work like that. The job of a composer is putting something down on a piece of paper that will inspire the person who's playing.

  John Zorn

  Jobs, Ideas, Inspire

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• Human history has become too much a matter of dogma taught by 'professionals' in ivory towers as though it's all fact. Actually, much of human history is up for grabs. The further back you go, the more that the history that's taught in the schools and universities begins to look like some kind of faerie story.

  Graham Hancock

  School, Taught, Facts

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