"I have always loved going to school"
About this Quote
“I have always loved going to school” lands with a kind of disarming plainness, which is exactly why it’s effective coming from Rudolph A. Marcus: a scientist whose career is practically a monument to sustained curiosity. There’s no grand claim about genius, no romanticizing of hardship, no TED-style conversion narrative. Just affection for the institution most people treat as a hurdle. The intent feels almost corrective: a reminder that the engine behind serious scientific work is less “breakthrough” than appetite - for problems, for instruction, for being wrong in public and then less wrong tomorrow.
The subtext is that education isn’t a phase you outgrow; it’s a stance. Marcus doesn’t say he loved “learning,” which can sound solitary and self-directed. He loved “going to school,” a phrase that smuggles in routine, community, and submission to structure. That’s a scientist quietly endorsing discipline: the lab notebook, the lecture hall, the slow accrual of method. It also reframes ambition as continuity rather than escape. Many success stories pitch school as a ladder you kick away once you’ve climbed. Marcus keeps the ladder.
Context matters here. Born in 1923, Marcus came up when formal institutions were gatekeepers of credibility and resources, especially in the sciences. Loving school, in that world, reads as loving access - to mentors, libraries, equipment, a shared language of proof. It’s almost radical today, when schooling is often reduced to debt, credentialing, or culture war. Marcus’s line insists on a different moral: the thrill is in the classroom, not just the career.
The subtext is that education isn’t a phase you outgrow; it’s a stance. Marcus doesn’t say he loved “learning,” which can sound solitary and self-directed. He loved “going to school,” a phrase that smuggles in routine, community, and submission to structure. That’s a scientist quietly endorsing discipline: the lab notebook, the lecture hall, the slow accrual of method. It also reframes ambition as continuity rather than escape. Many success stories pitch school as a ladder you kick away once you’ve climbed. Marcus keeps the ladder.
Context matters here. Born in 1923, Marcus came up when formal institutions were gatekeepers of credibility and resources, especially in the sciences. Loving school, in that world, reads as loving access - to mentors, libraries, equipment, a shared language of proof. It’s almost radical today, when schooling is often reduced to debt, credentialing, or culture war. Marcus’s line insists on a different moral: the thrill is in the classroom, not just the career.
Quote Details
| Topic | Learning |
|---|
More Quotes by Rudolph
Add to List
