A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z Mortimer J. Adler Philosopher and Educator "Not to engage in the pursuit of ideas is to live like ants instead of like men." View Madeleine Korbel Albright Diplomat "While democracy in the long run is the most stable form of government, in the short run, it is among the most fragile." View Bhimrao Ambedkar Founding Father, Modern India "An idea needs propagation as much as a plant needs watering." View Laurie Anderson Artist "When love is gone, there's always justice." View Virginia Apgar Physician "Nobody, but nobody, is going to stop breathing on me." View Roone Arledge Broadcaster "Now we're going to take the viewer to the game!" View Edwin Howard Armstrong Inventor "The continuous good fortune which has followed me, providing second chances at inventions when the first chance was missed and tossed away, has been all that a man could hope for and more than he has any right to expect." View Isaac Asimov Author and Scientist "If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster." View Emanuel Ax Pianist "I really hope we can go back to the feeling that applause should be an emotional response to the music, rather than a regulated social duty." View Frederick A. P. Barnard Educator "It is earnestly to be hoped that no single and earnest seeker after knowledge, of whatever age, sex, or previous condition, shall be denied the privilege of coming here." View Salo Wittmayer Baron Historian "Only in a university can be found the range and diversity of disciplines and intellectual strengths that are necessary components of contemporary Judaica–history, political science, economics, sociology, philology, languages, and literatures." View Jacqueline Barton Chemist "What many people don't realize is how dynamic the structure of DNA is. The base pairs are always moving and vibrating, electrons are migrating, holes are opening up and closing through the center of the DNA." View Jacques Barzun Historian "The test and the use of man's education is that he finds pleasure in the exercise of his mind." View Charles Austin Beard Historian "Let us examine the assumptions." View Baruj Benacerraf Scientist "Through work does one reach the stars!" View Ruth Fulton Benedict Anthropologist "I gambled on having the strength to live two lives, one for myself and one for the world." View Adolph Augustus Berle, Jr. Economic Theorist "The 'free market' …has been completely displaced as the infallible god, has been substantially displaced as universal economic master, and increasingly ceases to be, or to be thought of as, the only acceptable way of economic life." View Theos Casimir Bernard Explorer and Scholar of Religion "It should be thought very strange if one's hands and feet refused to behave, or behaved in a manner which showed that their owner had no control over them. Yet that is how too often human beings allow their most delicate instrument, the mind, to behave." View Hazel Bishop Chemist "Women should use make-up to accentuate their most attractive feature. After the age of 25 or thereabouts, personality becomes an increasingly more attractive feature." View Franz Boas Anthropologist "If we were to select the most intelligent, imaginative, energetic, and emotionally stable third of mankind, all races would be present." View Randolph Bourne Social Critic "War is the health of the State." View Warren Edward Buffett Investor "It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price." View John W. Burgess Educator "We value [history] not by its brilliance, but by its productiveness." View Arthur Burns Economist "Professional economists should stick to their knitting...economic counseling and political advocacy could get in one another's way." View Nicholas Murray Butler Educator "Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and true progress." View James Francis Cagney Jr. Actor "Absorption in things other than self is the secret of a happy life." View Mary Calderone Sex Educator "We're still a sexophobic society, afraid of the wrong things for the wrong reason." View José Raul Capablanca Chess Champion "A good player is always lucky." View Benjamin Cardozo Jurist "The judicial process is one of compromise between paradoxes, between certainty and uncertainty, between the literalism that is exaltation of the written word and the nihilism that is destructive of regularity and order." View Bennett Alfred Cerf Publisher "There have been too many [books] in which some young man is looking forward, backward or sideways in anger. Or in which some Southern youth is being chased through the magnolia bushes by his aunt. She catches him on page 28 with horrid results." View Charles Frederick Chandler Educator "He has placed the entire world in his debt, and brought added dignity and prestige to the profession of which he is such a conspicuous ornament." —Perkin Medal citation, 1920 View Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm Congresswoman "In the end antiblack, antifemale, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing—antihumanism." View Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark Educational Psychologists "This is probably one of the most dangerous things facing mankind today: A use and training of intelligence excluding moral sensitivity." View DeWitt Clinton New York Builder "The fundamental error of Europe has been to confine the light of knowledge to the wealthy and great, while the humble and depressed have been as sedulously excluded from its participation as the wretched criminal, immured in a dungeon, is from the light of Heaven." View Barry Commoner Environmentalist "The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else." View John Corigliano Composer "I find the best art coming out of HBO…No matter what it's doing, whether it's comic or horror, it knows it must reach an audience." View André Frédéric Cournand Physiologist "We must educate people to develop a taste for ideas." View Lawrence Arthur Cremin Historian "When the Russians beat us into space, the public blamed the schools, not realizing that the only thing that had been proved was that their German scientists had gotten ahead of our German scientists." View Annie Elizabeth "Bessie" Delany Dentist and Author "It took me a hundred years to figure out I can't change the world. I can only change Bessie." View Sarah Louise "Sadie" Delany Teacher and Author "Life is short, and it's up to you to make it sweet." View John Dewey Philosopher "The future of our civilization depends upon the widening spread and deepening hold of the scientific cast of mind." View William Joseph Donovan General "The Office of Strategic Services means what its name implies: every service of a strategic nature, tried or untried, that may be useful to our Army and Navy and Air Force." View William Orville Douglas Jurist "The critical point is that the Constitution places the right of silence beyond the reach of government." View Irwin Edman Philosopher, Poet "Education is the process of casting false pearls before real swine." View Dwight D. Eisenhower U.S. President "Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage." View Niles Eldredge Paleontologist "If you are passionately interested in something, it's not hard." View Jay Martin Enoch Vision Scientist "In many ways, Columbia opened doors to my future." View John Erskine Literary Scholar "Opinion is that exercise of the human will which helps us to make a decision without information." View William Maurice Ewing Earth Scientist "It's my view that we won't know where the most interesting places are until we've seen all of them." View Clifton Fadiman Author, Editor "For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed." View Enrico Fermi Physicist "It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge." View Hamilton Fish Statesman "If our country is worth dying for in time of war let us resolve that it is truly worth living for in time of peace." View James Marston Fitch Preservationist "The ultimate task of architecture is to act in favor of human beings." View Virginia Kneeland Frantz Surgical Pathologist "If you go into medicine with stardust in your eyes you will be quickly disillusioned. But, if you are crazy enough to be determined to do it...the rewards are enormous." View Milton Friedman Economist "History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition." View Fred W. Friendly Journalist "Our job is not to make up anybody's mind but to make the agony of decision-making so intense you can only escape by thinking." View Arthur Ira Garfunkel Singer "It's taken me years to realize that the first or the second take is often the one. That's when you're authentically yourself—in spite of yourself." View Lou Gehrig Athlete "There is no room in baseball for discrimination. It is our national pastime and a game for all." View Allen Ginsberg Poet "Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does." View Ruth Bader Ginsburg Jurist "Civil liberties are an essential part of the overall human rights concern–the equality of all people and the ability to be free." View Stephen Jay Gould Paleontologist "If genius has any common denominator, I would propose breadth of interest and the ability to construct fruitful analogies between fields." View Moses Hadas Classicist "The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination." View Alexander Hamilton Founding Father "The existence of slavery makes us fancy many things that are founded neither in reason or experience." View Oscar Hammerstein II Lyricist and Librettist "He's a meticulously hard worker and yet he'll roam the grass of his farm for hours and sometimes for days before he can bring himself to put a word on paper." —Rodgers on Hammerstein View Edward Stephen Harkness Benefactor "What has happened here surpasses anything I did or could dream of." View Lorenz Hart Lyricist "The theater-going public is so many intellectual cuts above the popular music-buying public that it’s criminal to hand them a series of metrical insults and call it a score. Songs should advance the plot." View Carolyn Heilbrun Writer "Ideas move rapidly when their time comes." View Joseph Heller Author "People go to fight wars because they don't understand the seriousness of what they're doing." View Gilbert Arthur Highet Classicist "A teacher must believe in the value and interest of his subject as a doctor believes in health." View Richard Hofstadter Historian "A university is not a service station. Neither is it a political society, nor a meeting place for political societies. With all its limitations and failures, and they are invariably many, it is the best and most benign side of our society insofar as that society aims to cherish the human mind." View Herman Hollerith Inventor "The object of my invention is to generally facilitate the compilation and increase the scope of . . . statistics." View Charles Evans Hughes Jurist "We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is." View Langston Hughes Writer "Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly." View Zora Neale Hurston Writer "No matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you." View Pixley ka Isaka Seme Political Activist "The regeneration of Africa means that a new and unique civilization is soon to be added to the world." View John Jay Founding Father "The jury has the right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy." View Donald Clarence Judd Artist and critic "A shape, a volume, a color, a surface is something itself. It shouldn't be concealed as part of a fairly different whole." View Eric Kandel Neurophysiologist "One of the most remarkable aspects of an animal's behavior is the ability to modify that behavior by learning, an ability that reaches its highest form in human beings." View Alfred Kazin Critic and Writer "I was a literary radical, indifferent to economics, suspicious of organization, planning, Marxist solemnity and intellectual system building ." View Thomas Howard Kean Governor "Teaching is the only job I have ever had that can compare to being governor of a great state." View Helen Kim Educator "Freedom is not just a word here, not just a concept taken for granted. Its meaning is in the air we breathe, in our thoughts, in our hearts." View John Werner Kluge Business Leader "I think it's very important to have imagination and very important to dream, but I also think it is important to keep ideas to yourself until you are implementing them." View Alfred Abraham Knopf Publisher "I think that best-seller lists ought to be abolished by law. They're just another example of running with the crowd." View V. K. Wellington Koo Diplomat "The recent history of both Europe and Asia shows beyond a doubt the futility of trying to turn a tiger into a kitten by giving it a dish of cream." View Tony Kushner Playwright "My day job is playwright. My citizen job is activist. That's every citizen's job. I succeed and fail at both my jobs, but I try to do them both." View Louis Lawrence Little Coach "I did not come to Columbia to fail!" View Henry Demarest Lloyd Journalist "Liberty produces wealth, and wealth destroys liberty. " View Federico García Lorca Writer "I have not worried to be born, I do not worry to die." View Seth Low New York City Leader "The great city can teach something that no university by itself can altogether impart: a vivid sense of the largeness of human brotherhood, a vivid sense of man's increasing obligation to man; a vivid sense of our absolute dependence on one another." View Sid Luckman Athlete "You had to be there to realize how great Sid was." —Jimmy Cannon, sportswriter. View Otto Luening Composer "In American music today there's a terrific amount of differentiation, a variety of styles and approaches. And that's the American story: this enormous, broad thing." View Alfred Thayer Mahan Naval Historian "War now not only occurs more rarely . . . [but is] an occasional excess, from which recovery is easy." View Irwin D. Mandel Oral Biologist "Even in the oral cavity microcosm, we tolerate our neighbors but eschew uninvited strangers." View Herman Mankiewicz Screenwriter "In a movie… [t]he villain can lay anybody he wants, have as much fun as he wants cheating, stealing, getting rich, and whipping servants. But you have to shoot him in the end." View Joseph Mankiewicz Filmmaker "I've been in on the beginning, the rise, peak, collapse, and end of the talking picture." View Brander Matthews Drama Scholar "The art of teaching requires the instructor to guide his student to work independently to discover principles for himself, and in time to acquire the power of principles to the manifold situations which may confront him." View Anna Caroline Maxwell Nurse "Can a higher service be rendered mankind than is in our power to give?" View Terrence McNally Playwright "When the lights go down and the curtain goes up, how can you not get a rush? I mean, you’d not be human." View Margaret Mead Anthropologist "It's all one world. There are no islands anymore." View James Howard Meredith Activist "Nothing could be more insulting to me than the concept of civil rights. It means perpetual second-class citizenship for me and my kind." View Robert King Merton Sociologist "My life of learning has been largely shaped by a long series of chance encounters and consequential choices." View Thomas Merton Essayist "God utters me like a word containing a partial thought of himself." View Charles Wright Mills Sociologist "There are more men of knowledge in the service of power than men of power in the service of knowledge." View