Quotes

We all hear great random quotes from random community members. Here's a place to share them. At some point, it would be awesome to be able to pull from this and do a random quote generator, much like the old Daily Jolt had, but for now, we can at least begin a list....

(PLEASE NOTE, all quotes do not come straight from the source.)

Quotes
"Suprisingly, the question involves neither food nor sex." -Mark Feinstein, Animal Cognition CS 139f

"In order to write a meaningful story, you need to get really intimate with it. Good writing is like sex... like you want to have a cigarette when you finish it, not like 'I wish that story would put its clothes back on and leave'." - Kirstin Bakis, Intro to Fiction, giving some helpful advice about writing fiction.

"Human beings are just wet machines." -Lee Spector, CS 156: Quantum Computing

"No more playing, now it's back to school. No, wait! Now we watch a movie!" -Chris Perry, eagerly, in CS 232

"That's a very big question, and it's one of the first questions you'll encounter when you meet Jesus on Monday." -Alan Hodder, HACU 164: Text, Canon, Tradition: Scriptures and their Emergence in World Religions

"You need to open up a vein and bleed in order to earn a place at the table. And once you're at the table, and you're all warm and wet, you need to make art out of it." -Micheal Lesy, IA140, referring to writing well.

"That's what America is, afterall: an advertisement for itself." -Margaret Cerullo on Baudrillard, SS 290: Postmodernity and Politics

"There are more prisoners than farmers in the US right now." -Professor Leslie Cox, NS 294: Sustainable Agriculture and Organic Farming

"There is a book in the library called Physics and Chemistry Tables. It is like the Bible." -Dula recommending a resource for Chemistry

"I've studies nutrition and the one thing I know for sure is that people need their burgers. No one made it across the Berring Strait on berries! Yep, the whole ice free corridor was lined with McDonalds!" -Alan Goodman (Geoarcheology) on the the nutritional needs of people migrating across the Berring Strait.

And I hope you all plan on going to Grad school, because a Bachelor's Degree will have you managing a McDonald's. - Kathleen Brown-Perez (on a tirade about personal responsibility)

"To those studious amongst us, High Times was less a pot magazine than a literary review. Men of letters, those guys, for sure." - Professor Drabinski, HACU "Death"

"I want to hear a poem about moshing now." -Nell Arnold (after a student's piece desribed moshing)

"Pigeons are things you kick." -Prof. Townsend, disagreeing with Keats' poetic choice of birds

"Well thats just another dumb thing I've said at Monday morning breakfast." --- Greg Prince, Hampshire College President at breakfast with the president

"'Last minutes' are great...If it weren't for the last minute, most things wouldn't get done!" - Colin Twitchell, teacher and director of the Lemelson Assistive Technology Development Center at Hampshire College

"It's fine to have opinions about things you know nothing about." - Abraham Zablocki, Constructing Tibet, on speaker Michael Palenti

"An adult cannot go through life without lying at least once. All adults lie!" -Professor Robert Coles, discussing Booker T. Washington in Before the Harlem Rennaissance

"You're much hotter than a medium grey..." -Robert Seydel explaining how skin tones come out in black and white pictures.

"Anyone who has a 'wilderness' experience in Yosemite today is smoking something that's illegal." -Bob Rakoff, professor of Land and Property in America, on the numerous tourists in National Parks.

"Doubt is the first doorway to enlightenment". -Wang Chuk Dorje Negi on how doubt can be a good thing

"I'm not interested in literary criticism...Take the book apart as if you are a watch-maker wanting to make a watch of your own." -Professor Michael Lesy, IA 127: American Voices, American Lives

"Just imagine people different from you and picture what they like." -Christoph Cox, when asked by a student, "Can we determine what the vulgar aesthetic is?"

It turns out to be very easy to move the universe, but it's really hard to move your eyeball. -Ken Hoffman, Linear Algebra, referring to 3-d modelling

"I'm very excited about this leaf." -Nell Arnold, in reference to an "object" a student had brought in in response to a story.

"(1) All bleeps are blips.(2) Sneech is a bleep. (3) Sneech is a blip. Got it?" -Professor Sizer, CS 202 Philosophy of Mind on validity.

Professor: "What's the name of student government here?" Student: "A joke." - Phil Kelleher and student, CS 234

"Sex is really funny when you look at it from a long way back. Up close it is terrible!" - Professor Ken Hoffman, in a discussion on frog mating practices

"The reason I think he is doing something that nobody has done is because nobody has done it so badly" -referring to the author of our book's claim that he is breaking new ground with his book. -Professor Ray Coppinger, CS 260: Cognitive Ethology

"You know one day you're going to try to go home and it all will have sunk into the sea." - Roberta, on California

"Philosophy is NOT those late night, chemically-assisted conversations you hold in your dorm rooms..." -Laura Sizer, Emotions in the Brain

"In 1970, I took my class on a field trip to the Quabbin Reservoir. When we got to the water's edge, I turned around to make a natural history comment. However, my insight was lost on all the students, who'd quickly taken off their clothes and jumped inot the water. At that point, I realized that teaching at Hampshire was going to be quite a different experience." -Ken Hoffman (Taken from Non Satis Scire)

"Son-of-a-bitch doesn't even know how to end a novel!" - Joanna Hubbs, during "The World of Dostoevsky"

"There is some age at which it is not a good idea to remove half the brain." - Laura Sizer, CS-0132

"We're walking around in 1% Argon!" *silence* "...Well I think that's thrilling." -Larry Winship; Sustainable Agriculture and Orgainic Farming

"As an art-maker you're allowed to write about a really terrific glass of iced tea...so long as you do it right." -Professor Michael Lesy, IA 127: American Voices, American Lives

"At some schools this would be called a quiz. I call it a nudge in the direction of learning." - Chris Perry, CS 197, The Art and Science of Digital Imaging, explaining his little in-class quiz

Prof: "Actually the Buddha did have to defend himself sometimes." Student: "Oh really?" Prof: "He loved." Student: *pause* "I was hoping for flying powers or something." -Steve Heim in his class Buddhist Traditions

"Your script is good, but I think it could use more kickflips" -Michael Elyanow screen writing

"There is no hanky panky in Chemistry." -Dula Amarasiriwardena, chemistry-202

"Men are indiscriminately eager; they'll stick their prick into a hole in a tree! But to know how to do that with a woman...that they have to be taught!" -Lynn Miller, NS 198, Ever Since Darwin

"Sometimes you just have those conflicts, like, do I want sex or do I want a sandwich". -Amherst philosophy professor Jyl Gentzler on the conflicts of the appetites which we all supposedly have.

"Isn't it crazy?! If there are a hundred people running around New York City in red hats, my crops won't grow!" -Larry Winship; Sustainable Agriculture and Organic Farming

"It's just three words: lubed-up, naked twister. It doesn't mean anything." - Mario D'Amato, commenting on the philosophy of Nietzsche.

"... It is the fact of the matter -- There are NO fucking unicorns..." -Christoff [while speaking about relativism] Philosophy: Relativism and Truth

"If you don't, you will die a silent death." -L. Brown Kennedy while advising her class to read for class over spring break.

"I am selling a particular commodity - knowledge - and you are all buying it. Chumps." - Falguni Sheth, SS260

"Well, this doesn't make sense -- it must be modernism!" -Eric Schocket

"Why am I standing on this chair?" -Elly Donkin, Female Playmakers

"Ah, and here we have another archetypal image of the American West: the big fucking tree." -Bob Rakoff, while showing slides in SS 261: Environmental History of North America

"Just imagine, if our cells had cell walls instead of cell membranes, we'd be trees!" -Ann McNeal, Physiology NS202

"The purpose of a college education is to make learning as easy as eating." -Lynn Miller, NS 123: Human Biological Variation

"And we'll all get smelly together, so it won't really matter." -Steve Roof NS 187, Geology II, while talking about our trip to Death Valley over Spring Break

"As soon as anyone says 'quantum,' I reach for my gun." -Prof. Mark Feinstein, Music in Culture and Nature

"You can compost anything. I mean, Leslie's composting llamas." - Nancy Hanson

"Its a big Geology convention where a bunch of Geologists go to talk about rocks and drink beer." -Steve Roof, Geological controversies

"If Aaron Berman can't make me say yes, no one can make me say yes." -Lester Mazor, on the status of my enrollment in SS399e, Perspectives on Time

"You can beat them until they bleed, but you can't teach them much except to cry." - Ray Coppinger, Biocomputational Developmental Ecology, speaking about puppies and children

"Your next homework assignment? Get drunk and sleep in a ditch for a while. See what happens." - The Irish creative writing professor I have on my study abroad program

"Stop the war and have a lot of holidays! We were Marxists and we had to reclaim our holidays for the working class." - Laurie Nisonoff, Controversies in U.S. Economic and Social History reflecting on her MIT days

"It is Death Valley. We're not going to Mr. Nice Place." -Steve Roof, NS 187 Geoloyg II, explaining the hazards of Death Valley.

"When you are drinking beer, you should always imbibe using the orifice embedded in the middle of your skull. You should not use other orifices." -The illustrious Michael Lesy, IA 217, giving helpful advice to some confused students.

"They knit in CLASS?! You should tell Greg Prince. Does he know about this? YAH he's here every Monday morning. You should really tell him as soon as possible." - Roberta, commenting on the dreaded class knitters

"Every time someone smokes pot, someone in Mexico gets shot" - Laura Wenk