ACADEMIA

Art is not to be taught in Academies. It is what one looks at, not what one listens to, that makes the artist. The real schools should be the streets.
Oscar Wilde

In universities and intellectual circles, academics can guarantee themselves popularity -- or, which is just as satisfying, unpopularity -- by being opinionated rather than by being learned.
A. N. Wilson

There is but one step from the Academy to the Fad.
Samuel Butler

I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike -- and I don't think there really is a distinction between the two -- are always dominated by fools, knaves, charlatans and bureaucrats. And that being the case, any human being, male or female, of whatever status, who has a voice of her or his own, is not going to be liked.
Harold Bloom

If poetry is like an orgasm, an academic can be likened to someone who studies the passion-stains on the bedsheets.
Irving Layton