Ivory Tower Quotes

I don't want to live in an ivory tower, being the songwriter who just turns inward.

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

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

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

An ivory tower is a fine place as long as the door is open.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Even ivory towers need central heating.

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.

As much as we sometimes roll our eyes at the ivory-tower isolation of universities, they continue to serve as remarkable engines of innovation.

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.

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.

The only refuge left to us was the poet's ivory tower, which we climbed, ever higher, to isolate ourselves from the mob.

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Ivory towers are as rare as bowling alleys in tribal cultures.

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.

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

Maybe what I admired most about John Steinbeck is that he never mortgaged his 45-acre heart for a suite in an ivory tower.

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.

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.

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