Quotes: Professions.

Profession 93 Edmund: "…and it will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation." Austen, Mansfield Park. The quality of the clergy merely reflects the nation as a whole.

Professions 234 "I would say of metaphysicians what Scaliger said of the Basques: They are supposed to understand each other, but I do not believe it." Chamfort. 1805. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms. Members of a profession should understand each other. They don't.

Professions 238 "There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers." Wm. James. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms. They tear each other's ideas to shreds in "learned" journals.

Professions 266 "People who have taken no intellectual food for ten years, except for a few tiny crumbs from the journals, are found even among the professors; they aren’t rare at all." Lichtenberg. 1764-99. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms. Members of professions must keep up.