Seminar Funny Quotes

The whole thing reminds me of graduate school seminars, except these people are smart and funny and have something interesting to say.

There was a seminar for advanced students in Zürich that I was teaching and von Neumann was in the class. I came to a certain theorem, and I said it is not proved and it may be difficult. Von Neumann didn’t say anything but after five minutes he raised his hand. When I called on him he went to the blackboard and proceeded to write down the proof. After that I was afraid of von Neumann.

I don't want to be around people who accept me as is, in my unrefined state of becoming. I consistently want people around me who push and encourage me to be my ultimate best, who bring out the inner diamonds. I want to be around those intellectual giants who extract the gold within me, those who force me to read, to attend classes, seminars, conferences, and who steep me in an environment of perpetual growth and upward mobility. Not trying to be funny, but I've learned that I simply cannot afford to invest too much time around mediocrity. It's contagious.

It is necessary to have metaphysical ideas-we cannot do without them-but it is also necessary to submit them very seriously to the test whether they agree with the human being: a good metaphysical idea does not spoil one's stomach. For instance, if I hold a metaphysical conviction that we live on after death for fifty thousand years instead of fifty million-if that is a solution-! try what it means if I believe in fifty thousand years only; perhaps that is good for my digestion-or bad. You see, I have no other criterion. Of course, it sounds funny, but I start from the conviction that man has also a living body and if something is true for one side, it must be true for the other. For what is the body? The body is merely the visibility of the soul, the psyche; and the soul is the psychological experience of the body. So it is really one and the same thing. Therefore, a good truth must be true for the whole system, not only for half of it. According to my imagination, something seems to be good-it f-its in with my imagination-but it proves to be entirely wrong for my body. And something might apparently be quite nice for the body, but it is very bad for the experience of the soul, and in that case I have a metaphysical enteritis. So I must be careful to bring the two systems together; the only criterion is that both are balanced. When life flows, then I can say it is probably all right, but if I get upset I know something must be wrong, out of order at least. Jung, C. G.. Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar given in 1934-1939. Two Volumes: 1-2, unabridged (Jung Seminars) (p. 355).

Korie: Phil and Willie are so much alike. We went to a marriage seminar at our church one time, and Phil and Kay and Jase and Missy were there as well. Each of the couples took a personality test to see if their personalities were compatible. We all laughed because Phil and Willie scored high in the characteristics for having a dominant personality. They were almost identical in a lot of areas, but somewhat different in that Willie was high in the social category as well. I think Willie got that part of his personality from his mother. It’s funny because people look at the Robertsons and think Jase and Phil are just alike, and they are certainly similar in their love for ducks. But when we took the personality test, we saw that Jase’s personality is much more like his mother’s. So I guess it makes sense that Phil and Jase get along so well in the duck blind. They made a good team, just like Phil and Kay do at home. Kay has always said that Willie is a lot like Phil and even calls him “Phil Jr.” at times. While I wouldn’t go that far, I definitely saw the similarities. They both have strong, charismatic personalities. They are both big-picture guys with big ideas and deep beliefs. Whatever either of them is going in life, he does it all the way, and they are both very opinionated, which can sometimes be a challenge. Phil and Willie haven’t always been as close as they are now. As they grew, they recognized the attributes they have in common and learned to value one another’s differences and strengths. Willie says it couldn’t have happened until after he was thirty, though. He needed to grow up and mature, and Phil has gotten more relaxed as he’s gotten older. Willie loves to hunt with his dad and brothers, but there have been times when he’s had a hard time sitting in Phil’s blind. You can only have one leader in the duck blind, only one man who lines up the men and yells, “Cut ‘em!” when it’s time to shoot. Willie and Phil have both always been leaders, whether it’s in the blind or in business.

Mark Gungor runs marriage seminars. He gave a very funny but all-too-true description of the difference between men’s and women’s brains, called “A Tale of Two Brains.” Men’s brains, he said, are composed of many little boxes.There’s a box for the car, a box for money, a box for the kids, a box for the job, a box for the marriage, and so on. The rule, according to Gungor, is that the boxes don’t touch. When a man discusses a particular subject, he pulls that box out, opens it, and discusses only what is in that box. Then he closes the box and puts it away, being very careful not to touch any other box. Gungor added that men have one very special box, which is their favorite, and it’s called the nothing box because there’s nothing in it.That accounts for how they can sit motionless in front of the TV for six hours. In contrast, women’s brains are like a big ball of wire, and everything is connected to everything else. It’s like the Internet superhighway. The job touches the car, which touches the house, which touches the mother-in-law, which touches the job. Women remember everything because everything is connected and is fueled by emotion. When I heard this description, it occurred to me that this quality of emotional interconnection gives women a terrific benefit in business. We can put it all together and figure out solutions while the men are packing and unpacking their individual boxes.

7. Ricky Gervais as David Brent Only people who have seen the British Office will remember the moment when David Brent says, “I think there’s been a rape up there” in a sensitivity training seminar he is holding. As my friend B. J. Novak described it, it was such a profoundly funny moment on television that there was a paradigm shift in comedy after he said it. With the character of David Brent, Ricky Gervais guaranteed that he would live in the pantheon forever, even if he did years of terrible, mediocre stuff. (I’m not saying he will, but he could if he wanted.) He’s like Woody Allen, and the original The Office is his Annie Hall.

I'd had kisses. Rushed, wet, tasting of beer, right out in the open. I'd messed around with a funny sophomore in my anthropology seminar and a shy journalism grad student, and while these nights were satisfying in their way, the pleasure didn't last past 2:00 am. I missed patience, the sweet, smoky taste of scotch. And the gut thrum of the forbidden. Instead of obscuring my memory of him, the hours I spent with boys at school slid to the edges and collected around it, like a frame.