If a student takes the whole series of my folklore courses including the graduate seminars, he or she should learn something about fieldwork, something about bibliography, something about how to carry out library research, and something about how to publish that research.
You will throughout your life have people who will tell you that you're not good enough. Maybe they're jealous. Maybe they think you aren't. Maybe they've had a bad day. But ultimately you have to believe in yourself.
Live all of your life. Understand it, see it, appreciate it. And have fun.
Our record number of teenagers must become our record number of high school and college graduates and our record number of teachers, scientists, doctors, lawyers, and skilled professionals.
Death is the Graduation of the Soul
The idea of winning a doctor's degree gradually assumed the aspect of a great moral struggle, and the moral fight possessed immense attraction for me.
The world is run by those who show up not those who wait to be asked.
Be aware that even before you have reached your ultimate professional destination, if you always strive for excellence, you can and should have a substantial impact on the world in which you live.
The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.
The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.
The most important aspect of freedom of speech is freedom to learn. All education is a continuous dialogue - questions and answers that pursue every problem on the horizon. That is the essence of academic freedom.
You're not going to get very far in life based on what you already know. You're going to advance in life by what you're going to learn after you leave here.
You'll never know what you're capable of if you don't try.
Make glorious and fantastic mistakes.
Stay the course, light a star, Change the world where'er you are.
Very early on in this process though I studied acting in high school and college, soon after graduation, I walked away from the craft because I wanted to know that this is what I was supposed to do with my life.
Success is often the result of taking a misstep in the right direction.
So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality.
There's no there. That elusive 'there' with the job, the beach house, the dream, it's not out there. There is here. It's in you. . . right now.
For a man to attain to an eminent degree in learning costs him time, watching, hunger, nakedness, dizziness in the head, weakness in the stomach, and other inconveniences.