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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• I've always been interested in pop culture. Some of my colleagues think of pop culture as beneath them, or there's the ivory tower and then there's everybody else, and I never could buy into that wall that's been put up by so many people over the decades and even the centuries.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Wall, Thinking, Ivory

  Source: bookriot.com

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• We look down on our scientists if they engage in outside consultation. We implicitly promote the ivory tower.

  Vikram Sarabhai

  Towers, Looks, Scientist

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• There's an interesting book about that called The Third Reich and the Ivory Tower, written by Stephen H. Norwood. It has a long discussion about Harvard, and indeed the school's president, James Conant, did block Jewish faculty. He was the one who prevented European Jews from being admitted to the chemistry department - his field - and also had pretty good relations with the Nazis.

  Noam Chomsky

  Block, Book, School

  Source: thehumanist.com

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• Scientists are supposed to live in ivory towers. Their darkrooms and their vibration-proof benches are supposed to isolate their activities from the disturbances of common life. What they tell us is supposed to be for the ages, not for the next election. But the reality may be otherwise.

  Simon LeVay

  Reality, Age, Towers

  "Queer Science: The Use and Abuse of Research into Homosexuality". Book by Simon LeVay, Cambridge: MIT Press. p. 9, 1996.

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• Chefs who cook in these ivory towers are in control in their own world. We try to approximate that world as best we can, but ultimately our goal is to please our clients.

  David Castle

  Goal, Trying, Towers

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• Maybe what I admired most about John Steinbeck is that he never mortgaged his 45-acre heart for a suite in an ivory tower.

  Tom Robbins

  Heart, Towers, Acres

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• It's about communication, no matter how impossibly hard your art is to understand and how much of an ivory tower or high horse you get on, it's still basically communication or why are you doing it?

  Wayne White

  Art, Horse, Communication

  Source: screenanarchy.com

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• The artist's life is to be where life is, active life, found in neither ivory tower nor concrete shelter; he must be out listening to everything, looking at everything, and thinking it all out afterward.

  Sean O'Casey

  Book, Thinking, Artist

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• It's a fallacy that writers have to shut themselves up in their ivory towers to write. I have all these interruptions, three of which I gave birth to. If I was thrown for a loop every time I was distracted I could never get anything done.

  Jodi Picoult

  Writing, Three, Towers

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