Academia Quotes

My brother is two years older than me and he was brilliant at everything, it seemed. He was captain of the cricket and rugby teams. We had this rather archaic system of head boys and prefects at my school. I was in my fourth year - in Scotland we finish school in our sixth year - and my brother had become head boy and brilliant at everything: academia, sports. In fact, all the things I wasn`t good at. Then he left and I couldn`t get my head round anything, so I became depressed and got in trouble a lot. I remember my mother driving me one night through heavy rain, with the windscreen wipers going. It was the first half term of my fifth year and she said that she`d spoken to my dad and that I could leave school if I wanted to. I`d only assumed that I`d have to stick it out until I was 18, but here I was being offered the chance to leave at 16. My whole world opened up. I couldn`t believe it. And I was out, as soon as she said those words.

I could have seen myself going into academia, but I don`t love it; I just like it.

One of the things that`s great about New York is that it is not a one-industry town. It has education, academia, the service industry, arts, publishing, theater, politics, fashion, finance, as well as movie-making. There are so many people who are cogs in the great wheel of the city that a less bright light is shone on our lives. It still exists - there are always paparazzi at our house - but being a public person feels less like a business than it does in LA. And you have to approach it differently. I can`t hide behind gates, or in a car, but if I can get a few yards from my front door, I can still get lost in a crowd. I am always moments, just moments, from obscurity on a crowded street in New York.

They wanted a great university without building a great university. They knew a lot about football, but not a lot about academia.

Actually, for some time now I have given some thought to opening a film school. But if I did start one up you would only be allowed to fill out an application form after you have walked alone on foot, let`s say from Madrid to Kiev, a distance of about five thousand kilometres. While walking, write. Write about your experiences and give me your notebooks. I would be able to tell who had really walked the distance and who had not. While you are walking you would learn much more about filmmaking and what it truly involves than you ever would sitting in a classroom. During your voyage you will learn more about what your future holds than in five years at film school. Your experiences would be the very opposite of academic knowledge, for academia is the death of cinema. It is the very opposite of passion.

If I can lure him away from academia, I`d be delighted.

Materialist philosophies that treat human beings as machines or animals possess the high ground in our culture - academia, the most powerful media and many of our courts.

The brain scientists are the wave of the future in the financial world. If you seek to maximize understanding, whether you`re in academia or in the investment community, you`d better pay serious attention to them.