The Empress has been connected with the ideas of universal fecundity and in a general sense with activity.

And don’t forget that it is the press, the pulpit, and the university that mould public opinion, set the thought-pace of the nation. As for the artists, they merely pander to the little less than ignoble tastes of the Plutocracy.

“Many of the projects I’m most proud of are tall buildings, especially the housing projects. In New York I have two: one in Kips Bay and one at the New York University. At that time, those projects were most challenging.”

Many of the projects I’m most proud of are tall buildings, especially the housing projects. In New York I have two: one in Kips Bay and one at New York University. At that time, those projects were most challenging.

We learned in the university to consider Wordsworth and Keats as Romantics. They were only a generation apart, but Wordsworth didn’t even read Keats’s book when he gave him a copy.

In the West, the ideological indoctrination is subtler. It is achieved by an ethos of political correctness and best enforced by creating university campuses that lack intellectual diversity. Political correctness is like the sting of the spider wasp. Recall that the afflicted spider is dragged to the wasp’s burrow in a zombie-like state and is subsequently eaten in vivo by the wasp’s offspring.

Although I went to college in the United States – Carleton in Northfield, Minnesota – I returned to the Middle East for a year in 1970-71 to study at the American University of Beirut.

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.

At university, I had been obsessed with reading about the lives of Rimbaud and Baudelaire, and I was steeped in the crazy poets, and I came to view my early subjects through that prism.

I still have some of my old University essays, and I do still have my drawing book from primary year seven.

Sir, if you ever presume again to speak disrespectfully of General Grant in my presence, either you or I will sever his connection with this university.

Religion is part of the human make-up. It’s also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.

If you don’t know who you are, a university is an expensive place to find out.

If one cannot state a matter clearly enough so that even an intelligent twelve-year-old can understand it, one should remain within the cloistered walls of the university and laboratory until one gets a better grasp of one’s subject matter.