The problem arises when a society respects its scholars lesser and lesser and replaces intellectualism with anti-intellectualism. Such society forces the most intellectual members of its, toward alienation and instead develops populism and irrationalism and then calls it anti-elitism. On the other hand, scholars, due to being undermined by the society, find any effort hopeless and isolate themselves into their work. For a scholar, personally, nothing changes because the scholar always is a scholar no matter having someone to share the knowledge with or not, but the true problem forms in the most ordinary sections of the society, which eventually creates an opportunity for propaganda, conspiracy theories, rhetoric, and bogus.
Choose a leader who will invest in building bridges, not walls. Books, not weapons. Morality, not corruption. Intellectualism and wisdom, not ignorance.
If you fail an examination, it means you have not yet master the subject. With diligent study and understanding, you will succeed in passing the exams.
The old man was peering intently at the shelves. 'I'll have to admit that he's a very competent scholar.'Isn't he just a librarian?' Garion asked, 'somebody who looks after books?'That's where all the rest of scholarship starts, Garion. All the books in the world won't help you if they're just piled up in a heap.
To be knowledgeable, sit before scholars; to be wise, sit before life.
To be a scholar study math, to be a smart study magic.
No matter how knowledgeable you are, respect your parents for their experience and your children for their curiosity.
These bits of paper are covered with lies. They poison your minds. And so long as they exist, you cannot hope to see the world as it truly is.(...)You turn to them for answers and salvation. (...) You rely more upon them than upon yourselves. This makes you weak and stupid. You trust in words. Drops of ink. Do you ever stop to think of who put them there? Or why? No. You simply accept their words without question. And what if those words speak falsely, as they often do? This is dangerous.
The indescribable pleasure—which pales the rest of life's joys—is abundant compensation for the investigator who endures the painful and persevering analytical work that precedes the appearance of the new truth, like the pain of childbirth. It is true to say that nothing for the scientific scholar is comparable to the things that he has discovered. Indeed, it would be difficult to find an investigator willing to exchange the paternity of a scientific conquest for all the gold on earth. And if there are some who look to science as a way of acquiring gold instead of applause from the learned, and the personal satisfaction associated with the very act of discovery, they have chosen the wrong profession.
It is never late to earn a degree, masters or doctorate. Learning has no age limit. All age groups are welcome to the act of learning.
Allah, Most High, has truly blessed us. He has created just for us the mysterious spirit that He has breathed into us and by so doing distinguished us from all other physical creation. He has adorned us with our incomparable intellect, which further distinguishes us from all else in this creation. What other creature on this planet -another gift He has blessed us with- can even begin to create the likes of this Internet? Will we not stop, give thanks to our Merciful and Generous Lord? Will we not stop and realize how precious our lives are and begin to show each other more love, mercy, kindness and empathy? Will we not stop, take time, and reflect?
A great thinker does not necessarily have to discover a master idea but has to rediscover and to affirm a true but forgotten, ignored or misunderstood master idea and interpret it in all the diverse aspects of thought not previously done, in a powerful and consistent way, despite surrounding ignorance and opposition. This criterion we think would include all prophets and their true followers among the Muslim scholars. He is both a great and original thinker who brings new meanings and interpretations to old ideas, thereby providing both continuity and originality to the important intellectual and cultural problems of his time and through it, of mankind. Thus the brilliant interpretations of scholars and sages like al-Ghazali and Mulla Sadra then, and Iqbal and al-Attas now, deserve to be recognized and acknowledged as manifesting certain qualities of greatness and originality.
Approaching the Start of Civil ExamsPerhaps I was once a young Chinese scholarapproaching the start of civil exams,my mind grown weary and sad from seclusionwith books on syntax and poetic style.All that I knew were the mist-covered mountainsand sweet white blossoms of mountain applesthat grew in the valleys of my province.But I had been gone over six yearsbusy with studies in the Heavenly Cityempty and thin despite my work.I showed my verses to an older poetwho told me a truth I longed to believe:all knowledge is futile and barrenwhich does not open the love of your friends.
We all have so many functions, so many ways of existing. In my own vision of myself, I am a scholar who lives quietly, and pens his little tales, and dreams about a past that may or may not have existed. And that is true, as far as it goes. But I am also, in one of my capacities, like so many of the people you have chosen to associate with, a psychopomp. I escort the living to the world of the dead.
After debating with a religious scholar you leave the room but suddenly you are pushed and about to hit the ground. If you fall and hit the ground; they will tell you, you saw the power of God he made you fall and now you are on the ground. If you fall but not hit the ground; they will tell you he just gave you a warning, he pushed you but later stopped you from hitting to ground to prove you his power. If you fall but not hurt; they will tell you, he hit you to the ground and as he is kind he didn’t let you to be hurt. If you fall and hurt; they will tell you, you saw the power of God, how he teaches the hypocrites, he just punished you by hitting you to the ground. If you even didn’t fall and walked away; they will tell everyone, God will show him one day his power; and certainly we all fall one day or another. The foundation of religion is on misbelieve and misunderstanding of the reality of nature and physics; it is not the God that changes things, but the one who takes the credit.
Islam’s all about knowledge, right? Muslims know everything. We seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave. We seek knowledge even if it be in China, Yusef, EVEN IN CHINA! And we’ve reduced our religion to fuckin’ academics. The guy who knows Islam best is the one who really hits the books hard, learns his shit. Muslims brag about having no priests but we’re getting molested by scholars. Yusef Ali, books are not Allah. Even a book by or from Allah is not Allah.
Based on the experience of history and civilization of mankind, which is more important for Muslims today, to no longer busy discussing the greatness that Muslims achieved in the past, or debating who first discovered the number zero, including the number one, two, three and so on, as the contribution of Muslims in the writing of numbers in this modern era and the foundation and development of civilizations throughout the world. But how Muslims will regained the lead and control of science and technology, leading back and become a leader in the world of science and civilization, because it represents a real achievement.
... for you will never, I trust, disconnect what you may yourselves be learning from the hope and prospect of being enabled thereby to teach others more effectually. If you do, and your studies in this way become a selfish thing, if you are content to leave them barren of all profit to others, of this you may be sure, that in the end they will prove not less barren of profit to yourselves. In one noble line Chaucer has characterized the true scholar:- "And gladly would he learn and gladly teach." Resolve that in the spirit of this line you will work and live.
Perhaps he even needs to have been a critic and a sceptic and a dogmatist and an historian, and in addition a poet and collector and traveller and puzzle-solver and moralist and seer and ‘free spirit’ and nearly all things, so that he can traverse the range of human values and value-feelings and be able to look with many kinds of eyes and consciences from the heights into every distance, from the depths into every height, from the corners into every wide expanse.
I would not be among you to-night (being awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine) but for the mentors, colleagues and students who have guided and aided me throughout my scientific life. I wish I could name them all and tell you their contributions. More, however, than anyone else it was the late Rudolf Schoenheimer, a brilliant scholar and a man of infectious enthusiasm, who introduced me to the wonders of Biochemistry. Ever since, I have been happy to have chosen science as my career, and, to borrow a phrase of Jacques Barzun, have felt that 'Science is, in the best and strictest sense, glorious entertainment'.