Academic put-downs

When it comes to put-downs (often good-natured, and sometimes nasty) about other people and their calling (and sometimes about the human condition itself), academics are certainly among the best! If you happen to know of other such put-downs, do please e-mail me! I will add them to this list.

1. Study Materials Science: everything else is immaterial.
   (slogan on T-shirts sold by the students of our Department)
2. This book fills a much-needed gap in the literature. The publishers should have opted for the gap.
   (This brutal quote is alleged to be due to Mark Kac. I found it in the book "Mathematics in Nature" by John A. Adam)
3. There is Physics; then there is stamp collecting.
   (attributed to Rutherford by a physicist friend of mine)
4. God gave all the easy problems to the physicists.
   (attributed to an unnamed behavioural researcher by Stephen Robbins in his text on Organizational Behaviour: 10th edition)
5. It is evolution by jerks.
   (attributed to biologists who hold a dim view of the theory of "punctuated equilibrium" due to Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge; quote taken from a talk by Paul Krugman, an economics professor now at Princeton)
6. Mathematical physics is that which hasn't enough rigour and generality to be math, but not enough contact with reality to be physics.
   (attributed to unnamed cynics by Cosma Shalizi and William Tozier in their paper on a simple model of the evolution of simple models of evolution)
7. Arguing with [Noam Chomsky's defenders] seems to be a lot like trying to teach Plato's Republic to a pig: it wastes your time, and it annoys the pig.
   (by Bradford DeLong, a professor of economics at University of California, Berkeley)
8. ... philosophy is the misuse of a terminology which was invented just for this purpose.
   (This delicious quote is attributed to W. Dubislav; I found it in Eugene Wigner's famous article on the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences )
9. A mathematician may say anything he pleases, but a physicist must be at least partially sane. (by J.W. Gibbs)
10. Mathematics is an interesting intellectual sport but it should not be allowed to stand in the way of obtaining sensible information about physical processes. (by Richard Hamming)
11. As I understand it, the claim is that the less you use Homeopathy, the better it works. Sounds plausible to me. (by David Deutsch)
12. Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe. (Albert Einstein)
13. Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped. (Elbert Hubbard)
14. Make it idiot-proof, and someone will make a better idiot. (Anonymous)
15. In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.... (Yogi Berra, a well known academic ...)
16. The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
    (John Kenneth Galbraith)
    This Harvard professor and former US Ambassador to India is also credited with the following quotes:

    Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.

    In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability.

Compilation started with the first four quotes on 28 January 2004.

---

---