Voters inclined to loathe and fear elite Ivy League schools rarely make fine distinctions between Yale and Harvard. All they know is that both are full of rich, fancy, stuck-up and possibly dangerous intellectuals who never sit down to supper in their undershirt no matter how hot the weather gets.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the common perception of Ivy League schools as elitist and disconnected from everyday realities.
Russell Baker's quote highlights how voters who harbor disdain for elite Ivy League institutions often fail to differentiate between them, viewing both Yale and Harvard as symbols of wealth and elitism. This perspective suggests a broader criticism of how society perceives intellectualism and privilege, emphasizing a disconnect between the perceived lifestyles of the elite and the everyday experiences of ordinary people.
In practice
During a panel on education reform, this quote could illustrate how public perceptions of elitism influence policy decisions.
So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can't even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and vroom! there he is, up on a rock a quarter of a million miles up in the sky.
The worst thing about the miracle of modern communications is the Pavlovian pressure it places upon everyone to communicate whenever a bell rings.
When it comes to cars, only two varieties of people are possible - cowards and fools.
Rereading A.J. Liebling carries me happily back to an age when all good journalists knew they had plenty to be modest about, and were.
Television was the most revolutionary event of the century. Its importance was in a class with the discovery of gunpowder and the invention of the printing press, which changed the human condition for centuries afterward.
Objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories: those that don't work, those that break down and those that get lost.
When children attend schools that place a greater value on discipline and security than on knowledge and intellectual development, they are attending prep schools for prison.
The natural inclination of a child is to take pleasure in the use of the mind no less than of the body. The child's primary business is learning. It is also the primary entertainment. To retain that orientation into adulthood, so that consciousness is not a burden but a joy, is the mark of the successfully developed human being.
I had the great good fortune of getting my Ph.D. in the very first year that universities were actively seeking women faculty. The government was putting pressure on universities to hire more women.
I believe that we should read only those books that bite and sting us. If a book we are reading does not rouse us with a blow to the head, then why read it?
Black is beautiful when it is a slum kid studying to enter college, when it is a man learning new skills for a new job. . . .
When we find ourselves unable to reason (as one often does when presented with, say, a problem in algebra) it is because our imagination is not touched. One can begin to reason only when a clear picture has been formed in the imagination. Bad teaching is teaching which presents an endless procession of meaningless signs, words and rules, and fails to arouse the imagination.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.