Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan:

“Academia has nothing to do with producing knowledge. They produce PR. The four most important thinkers of modern history – Freud, Marx, Einstein, Darwin – none was a conventional academic.” (Source)

A.N. Wilson, English historian and columnist:

“In universities and intellectual circles, academics can guarantee themselves popularity – or, which is just as satisfying, unpopularity – by being opinionated rather than by being learned.”