William Scott Quotes (16 Quotes)

For a Classicist, one must learn to ask the questions in the way that a pagan society did. I think it's very important and tough for many of us who grew up in a Judeo-Christian society.

There are certain authors that do not turn students on it is the truth. Homer happens to be one of them.

You just don't want to push people into doing things that they really don't want to do. I don't think it's going to produce much.

Wait a minute I'm not interested in agriculture. I want the military stuff. During a briefing military stuff in which officials began telling him about missile silos.

The theory on my part is to read reading is the answer. Read anything that you can get your hands on. I would try to make sure that the author has something to say. Take a wide selection of authors old, new, prose, poets, novels, epics, and all that stuff. .. Think about it and find something to talk about.

I no longer worry whether a painting is about something or not. I am only concerned with the expectation, from a flat surface, of an illusion.

On occasion I have drawn as a release from painting. The economy in using paper, pencil, charcoal and crayon can help towards a greater gamble and higher rewards. I also find that drawing can generate ideas more rapidly than painting.

I think it is important for us as teachers to offer a huge spread of courses from Plato, the deadest white male around, to very modern philosophy.

We all teach students a massive body of material to get some sort of mastery of it, pass a judgement, and defend it.

The British system had requirements, including Latin. I'm not positive you ever had to know Greek, but there are certainly kinds of curricula where you had to know Greek too. I think in Britain there was the most mindless, repetitive sort of learning.

The one thing you've got to say about Columbia is that it has courses that are famous. It has alumni who come back and say it was the best thing they ever did.

traveled around the world like a sheik.

I feel I can't teach you anything, what I can do is organize some material that may seem wildly complex when you first take a look at it. I've been working at it for such a long time I can at least organize it. So you can go home and teach yourself how to get control of it... I could throw an act, I can tell jokes and try to be stimulating, I can organize the books. If you don't want to do it, I can't do anything about it.

I feel constricted if I become too much aware of the act of making. Liberty is lost and instead of an instinctual lyrical expression the whole thing becomes arid.

Every painting I do is related to the last one it may be a continuation of a previous painting or it may be a reaction against it.

When I was an undergraduate at Princeton, freshman year, first term, I ended up in the course on Plato's Republic. That book just captivated me - not because of the answers, and the answers can be somewhat unsatisfying, but because of the questions, the way you went at it, the methods, the kinds of questions you could ask, the different answers you could get. That's why I'm still fascinated by that book.