Ihappentofeel thatthe degree of a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting attitudes she can bring to bear on the same topic.

-Alther, Lisa ne¤  e Reed
  Kinflicks, ch.7.

President Clinton returned today†to the university wherehe didn't inhale, didn't get drafted, and didn't get a degree.

-Dowd, Maureen
  On President Clinton's visit to Oxford where as a Rhodes Scholar he had tried marijuana, avoided conscription, and left to attendYale Law School. In the NewYork Times, 9  Jun.

Freedom doth with degree dispense.

-Jonson, Ben
  The Forest,'To Sir Robert  Wroth'.

Presently I shall be introduced as 'this venerable old gentleman'and the axe will fall when they raise meto the degreeof 'grandoldman'.Thatmeansonourcontinentany onewithsnow-whitehair whohaskeptoutof jailtill eighty.

-Leacock, Stephen Butler
  My Remarkable Uncle,'Three Score and Ten'.

All men who live with any degree of serenity live by some assurance of grace.

-Niebuhr, Reinhold
  Reflections on the End of Our Era.

Here lies a lady of beauty and high degree. Of chills and fever she died, of fever and chills, The delight of her husband, her aunts, an infant of three, And of medicos marvelling sweetly on her ills.

-Ransom,John Crowe
  Chills and Fever,'Here Lies a Lady'.

There is only one constant preoccupation: I have throughout been anxious to discover how much we can be said to know and with what degree of certainty or doubtfulness.

-Russell, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl
  My Philosophical Development, ch.1.

As every teacher, like every drill-sergeant or animal trainer, knows in his practice, teaching and training have virtually not yet begun, so long as the pupil istoo young, too stupid, too scared or too sulky to respondöand to respond is not just to yield.Where there is a modicum of alacrity, interest or anyhow docility in the pupil, where he tries, however faintheartedly, to get things right rather than awkward, where, even, he registers even a slight contempt for the poor performances of others, of chagrin at his own, pleasure at his own successes and envy of those of others, then he is, in however slight a degree, co-operating and so self-moving.

-Ryle, Gilbert
Quoted in R S Peters (ed) The Concept of Education (1966), ch.7.

The very power of science to hold knowledge as collective knowledge is founded upon a degree and a quality of trust which are arguably unparalleled elsewhere in our culture† Scientists know so much about the natural world by knowing so much about whom they can trust.

-Shapin, Steven
  A Social History ofTruth.