Berkeley Quotes

• After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, "I refute it thus."

  James Boswell

  Philosophy, Science, Feet

  James Boswell (1998). “Life of Johnson”, p.333, Oxford University Press, USA

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• At the very top state institutions, like UCLA, Berkeley and the University of Texas, however, the trend of downward minority enrollment remains persistent and discouraging.

  Adam Schiff

  Uc Berkeley, Texas, Ucla

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• I was a grad student at UC Berkeley when I bought my Apple II and it suddenly because a lot more interesting than school

  Andy Hertzfeld

  School, Apples, Uc Berkeley

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• I liked Berkeley tremendously, Berkeley was a very leftist campus. I came to love that city as much as I love Paris or the south of France or New York.

  Whitfield Diffie

  New York, Cities, Paris

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• At Berkeley I had my first encounter with real professional scientists.

  Robert B. Laughlin

  Real, Encounters, Firsts

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• This preparatory sort of idealism is the one that, as I just suggested, Berkeley made prominent, and, after a fashion familiar. I must state it in my own way, although one in vain seeks to attain novelty in illustrating so frequently described a view.

  Josiah Royce

  Fashion, Views, Swag

  Josiah Royce (1900). “The Spirit of Modern Philosophy: An Essay in the Form of Lectures”, p.351, Courier Corporation

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• The completion of my undergraduate training at the University of California (Berkeley) provided just the needed touches of rigor at advanced levels in both economics and mathematics.

  Lawrence Klein

  California, Training, Levels

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• My parents are Italian and British. They live in Berkeley now - we all moved there four years ago.

  Claire Forlani

  Italian, Years, Parent

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• I had hoped to go to law school, but the war started, and because of the strong feeling that I did not want to kill anybody, I joined the Merchant Marine when I graduated from Berkeley.

  Douglass North

  Strong, War, School

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• Berkeley had a liberal element in the student body who tended to be quite active. I think that's in general a feature of intellectually active places.

  John Searle

  Thinking, Elements, Body

  "Professor recalls pros, cons of Free Speech Movement". Interview with Meriah Doty, www.cnn.com. January 9, 2004.

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• I survived only a year in Berkeley, partly because I declined to sign the anticommunist loyalty oath.

  Jack Steinberger

  Loyalty, Years, Oath

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• One of the reasons I came to Berkeley was because I saw so many students of all different colors speaking so many different languages and ferociously presenting all these different views. I thought, this is the 21st century and I want to be here!

  June Jordan

  Views, Color, Different

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• When I first started teaching at Berkeley in 1958, I could not announce that I was gay to anybody, though probably quite a few of my fellow teachers knew.

  Thom Gunn

  Teacher, Teaching, Pride

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• Berkeley hackers liked to see themselves as rebels against soulless corporate empires.

  Eric S. Raymond

  Rebel, Empires, Hackers

  Eric S. Raymond (2001). “The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary”, p.13, "O'Reilly Media, Inc."

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• We jumped into the protest of Vietnam before the Black Panther Party ever started, before the Black Panther Party was even thought of. In fact, it was late 1965 and 1966 that the anti-Vietnam War, anti-draft to the Vietnam War protest started at University of California, Berkeley.

  Bobby Seale

  War, Party, California

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• Democrats have chosen not to defend the Marine Corps, but to pander to anti-war protesters and Berkeley officials that are actively trying to impede military recruitment.

  Jim DeMint

  Military, War, Marine

  "Reid’s move delayed rap on Berkeley". thehill.com. February 11, 2008.

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• I only wish my brother David had survived to experience Berkeley as well. No one would flinch here if we were to walk down the street together, whereas in Indiana we were constantly met with hostility. I don't believe in heaven, but this is about as close to heaven on earth as I imagine getting.

  Julia Scheeres

  Brother, Believe, Heaven

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• The funniest thing is not who influenced me positively, but who influenced me negatively. I had such an aversion to what Busby Berkeley did; in my early formative years, I thought it was terrible. Now, I think it's wonderful. But then, I wanted to do anything but what Busby Berkeley did.

  Stanley Donen

  Thinking, Years, Aversion

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• The thing I learned is that the work is getting done by people who dig in and work on a particular project: the people who spend 20 years sustaining a theater for black teenagers in Chicago; the people who reintroduce sticklebacks into Strawberry Creek in Berkeley and then wait patiently for the first egrets to show up.

  Robert Hass

  Teenager, Years, People

  Interview with Sarah Pollock, www.motherjones.com. March/April, 1997.

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• I have a bunch of friends at the University of California at Berkeley, so that's always a fun drive. Last summer I took five road trips to Berkeley. It's so beautiful. I like to take the scenic routes and make stops along the way.

  Eden Sher

  Beautiful, Summer, Fun

  "New York tops the list for young actress". Interview with Jae-Ha Kim, www.chicagotribune.com. May 17, 2011.

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• My filmmaking style of remixing came out of necessity. When I was a film theory student at UC Berkeley in the early 1990s, there were no film production facilities. The only way I learned to tell stories on film was by re-cutting and splicing together celluloid of old movies, early animated films, home films, sound slug - anything I could get my hands on.

  Elisa Kreisinger

  Home, Cutting, Hands

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• Berkeley , Hume, Kant , Fichte , Hegel , James , Bergson all are united in one earnest attempt, the attempt to reinstate man with his high spiritual claims in a place of importance in the cosmic scheme.

  David Hume

  Spiritual, Men, Hegel

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• I studied music for my first two years in college. When I went to UC Berkeley, I failed the admission requirements to get into the music school there, so I studied communications and public policy, which actually were a greater engine for my career than a musical education would have been. If I had gotten into the music department at Berkeley, I'd probably be a timpanist in an orchestra right now.

  Stewart Copeland

  Communication, School, College

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• In San Francisco, most of the older activists, especially at Berkeley, were very hostile towards punks. The music, certainly, wasn't nice and mellow for them, and neither was our look or our attitude. While in Vancouver, the two most important early punk bands, D.O.A. and the Subhumans, were both managed by former yippie activists, who saw this as a logical extension of what they were already doing.

  Jello Biafra

  Attitude, Nice, Two

  Interview with Jodi Vander Molen, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. February 1, 2002.

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• Esse est percipi, to be is to be perceived, said good old Berkeley; but, according to most philosophers, he was wrong. Yet, obviously, there are things for which the adage holds. Perception, trivially, to begin with. If elements of conscious awareness--pains, tickles, feelings of heat and cold, sensory qualia of colors, sounds, and the like--have any existence, it must consist in their being perceived by a subject.... This shows, of course, that such experiences are epiphenomenal, at least with respect to the physical world.

  Zeno Vendler

  Pain, Color, Feelings

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