Sayre's law states, in a formulation quoted by Charles Philip Issawi: "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake."
According to Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson frequently complained about the personalized nature of academic politics, asserting that the "intensity" of academic squabbles was a function of the "triviality" of the issue at hand.
Another proverbial form is: "Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small."
This observation is routinely attributed to Henry Kissinger who in a 1997 speech at the Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs at Ashland University, said: "I formulated the rule that the intensity of academic politics and the bitterness of it is in inverse proportion to the importance of the subject they're discussing.
"[2] Variations on the same thought have also been attributed to scientist-author C. P. Snow, professor-politician Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Business Analyst Cyril Northcote Parkinson, and politician Jesse Unruh,[3] among others.