Backgrounds Quote by Philip Warren Anderson

Harvard meant a lot in my writing life from the beginning, even though I didnt actually do much composition on the spot.

— Seamus Heaney

Understood what the struggle was about. My mother. Couldn't read or write, but she had more sense than many a graduate from Harvard.

— Al Lewis

I was never very good at school with... humanities... anything which was more a matter of opinion.

— Terence Tao

Harvard was the most intimidating experience. I felt so out of my league there.

— Wendy Davis

Taking a look back, one big reqret is, I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world. The appalling…

— Bill Gates

The attraction to me was that Harvard was such a big community, with interesting things to do and interesting people, but you realise when…

— Tyler Winklevoss

It wasn't until the second half of my first year that I realized you have to try to make friends and meet people at…

— David Fahrenthold

Four years was enough of Harvard. I still had a lot to learn, but had been given the liberating notion that now I could…

— John Updike

Courses in the humanities, in particular, often seem impractical, but they are vital, because they stretch your imagination and challenge your mind to become…

— Martha Nussbaum

Harvard was very important to me and has been very important to so many people for so many years.

— John Paulson

When I entered Harvard, my background was mostly combinatorics and algebra.

— Maryam Mirzakhani

One thing that used to worry me is the fact that it seemed like Harvard was this big scary thing where I would have…

— Yara Shahidi