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 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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 hope I'm not giving the impression of an ivory tower science, but for me science is an attempt to understand, it's an attempt to understand the universe.

  George Coyne

  Giving, Towers, Impression

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Language evolves and moves on. It is an organic thing. It is not stuck in an ivory tower, hung with expensive works of art.

  E. L. James

  Art, Moving, Towers

  "Fifty Shades from Christian’s Point of View: Includes Grey and Darker". Book by E. L. James, 2017.

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• Even ivory towers need central heating.

  Breyten Breytenbach

  Towers, Needs, Heating

  Breyten Breytenbach (1996). “Memroy of Birds in Times of Revolution”

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• I'm not a believer in putting designers off in an ivory tower. They need to have a voice at the table so they can identify where and why design can make a difference. We also need to understand the business issues. If we don't make our numbers this quarter, we don't earn the right to do something cool the next time.

  Chuck Jones

  Voice, Differences, Numbers

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• I am an idealist. I often feel I would like to be an artist in an ivory tower. Yet it is imperative that I speak to people, so I must desert that ivory tower. To do this, I am a journalist - a photojournalist. But I am always torn between the attitude of the journalist, who is a recorder of facts, and the artist, who is often necessarily at odds with the facts. My principle concern is for honesty, above all honesty with myself.

  W. Eugene Smith

  Honesty, Attitude, Artist

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• I don't want to become an ivory tower filmmaker. That sounds peculiar, but I want to be a mainstream filmmaker. I want the largest possible audience that I can find - but, of course, on my terms.

  Peter Greenaway

  Sound, Peculiar, Towers

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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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• Well, start waving and yelling, because it is the so-called Oxford comma and it is a lot more dangerous than its exclusive, ivory-tower moniker might suggest. There are people who embrace the Oxford comma and people who don't, and I'll just say this: never get between these people when drink has been taken. Oh, the Oxford comma. Here, in case you don't know what it is yet, is the perennial example, as espoused by Harold Ross: "The flag is red, white, and blue." So what do you think of it? Are you for or against it? Do you hover in between?

  Lynne Truss

  Taken, Thinking, Ivory

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