104 Ivory Tower Quotes

Following is our list of ivory tower quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about tower.

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Famous Ivory Tower Quotes

An ivory tower is a fine place as long as the door is open. — Walter Darby Bannard

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

Too much of what is called 'education' is little more than an expensive isolation from reality. — Thomas Sowell

The intellectual is a middle-class product; if he is not born into the class he must soon insert himself into it, in order to exist. He is the fine nervous flower of the bourgeoisie. — Louise Bogan

College is a refuge from hasty judgment. — Robert Frost

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power. — Aldous Huxley

Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem. — John Galsworthy

High office, is like a pyramid; only two kinds of animals reach the summit — reptiles and eagles. — Jean le Rond d'Alembert

Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them. — George Orwell

As a system of philosophy it is not like the Tower of Babel, so daring its high aim as to seek a shelter against God's anger; but it is like a pyramid poised on its apex. — Adam Sedgwick

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education. — George Bernard Shaw

Idealism is like a castle in the air if it is not based on a solid foundation of social and political realism. — Claude McKay

In the immortal words of George Orwell, 'One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.' — Gad Saad

Educated fools; from uneducated schools. - Curtis Mayfield

Educated fools; from uneducated schools. — Curtis Mayfield

A university's essential character is that of being a center of free inquiry and criticism - a thing not to be sacrificed for anything else. — Richard Hofstadter

Short Ivory Tower Quotes

  • I hate intellectuals. They are from the top down. I am from the bottom up. — Frank Lloyd Wright
  • Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude. — Arthur Schopenhauer
  • Education is our only political safety. Outside of this ark all is deluge. — Horace Mann
  • Castles in the air - -they are so easy to take refuge in. And so easy to build as well. — Henrik Ibsen
  • The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance. — Charles Spurgeon

Ivory Tower Image Quotes

Ivory Quotes

Beige is atmosphere. It's bisque, it's ivory, it's cream, it's stone, it's toast, it's cappuccino. It;s well, it's magic. — Albert Hadley

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

Elephants are killed for their ivory, birds for their feathers. — Vietnamese Proverbs

Somewhere lives a bad Cajun cook, just as somewhere must live one last ivory-billed woodpecker. For me, I don't expect ever to encounter either one. — William Least Heat-Moon

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

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir, Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, With a cargo of ivory, And apes and peacocks, Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine. — John Masefield

There is no ivory in the mouth of a dog. — Vietnamese Proverbs

The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history. — Oscar Wilde

I am a simple man and I use simple materials: Ivory Black, Vermilion, Prussian Blue, Yellow Ochre, Flake White and no medium. That’s all I’ve ever used in my paintings. — L. S. Lowry

They say he's an intelligent man, right? Speaks five languages! I've got a 15-year-old boy from the Ivory Coast who speaks five languages! — Alex Ferguson

Tower Quotes

I'm the tower of power, too sweet to be sour. - Randy Savage

I'm the tower of power, too sweet to be sour. — Randy Savage

I'm the tower of power, too sweet to be sour. I'm funky like a monkey. Sky's the limit and space is the place! — Randy Savage

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. — J. R. R. Tolkien

This country [the Philippines] is like a pyramid, like a tower. It is made up of millions of stones... . And the foundation stone of this pyramid is the common man. — Ramon Magsaysay

Be like a solid tower whose brave height remains unmoved by all the winds that blow; the man who lets his thoughts be turned aside by one thing or another, will lose sight of his true goal, his mind sapped of its strength. — Dante Alighieri

I've been to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It's a tower, and it's leaning. You look at it, but nothing happens, so then you look for someplace to get a sandwich. — Danny Devito

The whole imposing edifice of modern medicine is like the celebrated tower of Pisa --slightly off balance. — Prince Of Wales Charles

The whole imposing edifice of modern medicine is like the celebrated tower of Pisa - slightly off balance. — Prince Charles

There is some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for. - J. R. R. Tolkien

There is some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for. — J. R. R. Tolkien

I haven't seen the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Louvre. I haven't seen anything. I don't really care. — Tyra Banks

Dark Tower Quotes

I do not kill with my gun; He who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father. I kill with my heart. — Stephen King

May you find your Tower, Roland, and breach it, and may you climb to the top! — Stephen King

The scariest, most terrifying thing that I fear? Yes. My Imagination. I thought you were going to say "Fear, itself." Then you have a small imagination. — Stephen King

There will be water if God wills it. - Stephen King

There will be water if God wills it. — Stephen King

A person’s never too old for stories. Man and boy, girl and woman, we live for them. - Roland Deschain — Stephen King

See you later, alligator. After a while, crocodile. — Bill Haley

What if I fall?', Tim cried. Maerlyn laughed. 'Sooner or later, we all do. — Stephen King

As for the end of the universe…I say let it come as it will, in ice, fire, or darkness. What did the universe ever do for me that I should mind its welfare? — Stephen King

We are going to fight. We are going to be hurt. And in the end, we will stand. — Stephen King

and so will the world end, I think, a victim of love rather than hate. For love's ever been the more destructive weapon, sure. — Stephen King

Twin Towers Quotes

Skill is successfully walking a tightrope between the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center. Intelligence is not trying. — Marilyn vos Savant

The people who died in the Twin Towers in that terrible crime mattered. The people who were bombed to death in dusty villages in Afghanistan didn't matter, even though it now seems that their numbers were greater. The people who will die in Iraq don't matter. — John Pilger

Societies raise their grandest monuments to what their cultures value most highly. As the tallest buildings in a city noted for tall buildings, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were certainly monumental. — Michael Mandelbaum

I think the only boundaries are individual and personal. A writer should be free to write about anything he or she wants to, including the twin towers. I have made small references to 9/11 in my past two books. — Michael Connelly

In the forest of primeval A school for Good and Evil Twin towers like two heads One for the pure And one for the wicked Try to escape you'll always fail, The only way out is Through a fairytale. — Soman Chainani

When we look at the settling of America we see a Bible in hand and God. Every Thanksgiving has God and the peacefulness of gratitude. It was important when the Twin Towers were hit and the sorrow with them that the first thing Congress did was sing "God Bless America." — Bill Cosby

Anything Can Happen is also, incidentally, a poem that arose from teaching. I'd talked about the Horace Ode (I, 34) [on which the poem is based] in a lecture I gave at Harvard in the fall of 2000 entitled Bright Boltsand remembered it after the Twin Towers attack. — Seamus Heaney

The VIP area, which is geared to live entertainment, is a black-lit stage with a neon painting resembling New York City on the walls. It's supposed to resemble New York City, ... Look, we even have the Twin Towers on there. — Mike Wells

The polls demonstrate that 50 percent of Americans who get their news from TV think Saddam Hussein was behind the Twin Towers attack. Man, have they got ways for getting half-truths out right away now, thanks to TV! I think TV is a calamity in a democracy. — Kurt Vonnegut

I seek the spread of freedom and democracy in the way that satisfies God. They [Americans] have planned and paved the ways for a long time, but it is God who is the real planner - and the proof of this is the fall of the American twin towers [...] a miracle from God. — Muqtada al Sadr

People Writing About Ivory Tower

Name Quotes Likes
Read quotes by Walter Darby Bannard

Walter Darby Bannard
quotes on art, life and love

98 370
Read quotes by Logan Pearsall Smith

Logan Pearsall Smith
quotes on education, slavery and religion

112 1020
Read quotes by Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell
quotes on truth, intellectuals and liberals

591 7260
Read quotes by Louise Bogan

Louise Bogan
quotes on love, life and education

43 300
Read quotes by Robert Frost

Robert Frost
quotes on life, love and nature

483 5638
Read quotes by Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley
quotes on death, love and god

656 9462

More Ivory Tower Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Even ivory towers need central heating. — Breyten Breytenbach

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

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

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

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

The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience. — W. H. Auden

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

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

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

Vigny, more secretAs if in his tower of ivory, retired before noon.N.B.: Vigny refers to Comte de Vigny, who locked himself in an ivory tower to work without the influences of man and desire. — Charles Augustin SainteBeuve

I know everybody. I make friends easily. I'm a gregarious guy, I'm open, I'm easy to get to know - I don't lock myself in an ivory tower. So I like people; I enjoy people. — Jerry Weintraub

Scholarship aimed at truly understanding what the biblical writers meant often does not filter down into the church and through the pulpit to folks who show up on Sunday. I think that's just wrong, but scholars rarely make any effort to decipher their own scholarly work for people outside the ivory tower. — Michael S. Heiser

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

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

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

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

The library is not, as some would have it, a place for the retiring of disposition or faint of heart. It is not an ivory tower or a quiet room in a sanitarium facing away from the afternoon sun. It is, rather, a command center, a power base. A board room, a war room. An Oval Office for all who preside over their own destinies. One does not retreat from the world here; one prepares to join it at an advantage. — Eric Burns

As for mathematicians themselves: don't expect too much help. Most of them are too far removed in their ivory towers to take up such challenges. And anyway, they are not competent. After all, they are just mathematicians-what we need is paramathematicians, like you... It is you who can be the welding force, between mathematicians and stories, in order to achieve the synthesis. — Apostolos Doxiadis

Out in Hollywood, where the streets are paved with Goldwyn, the word "sophisticate" means, very simply, "obscene." A sophisticatedstory is a dirty story. Some of that meaning was wafted eastward and got itself mixed up into the present definition. So that a "sophisticate" means: one who dwells in a tower made of a DuPont substitute for ivory and holds a glass of flat champagne in one hand and an album of dirty post cards in the other. — Dorothy Parker

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

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

Ivory towers are as rare as bowling alleys in tribal cultures. — Terry Eagleton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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