Graduates Quotes

Many students graduate from college and professional schools, including those of social work, nursing, medicine, teaching and law, with crushing debt burdens. ~ Jon Porter

Grades can matter, especially for those students and parents who live for the next round of applications to graduate or professional schools. But there's a problem with the grade emphasis. Math or science graduates earn more than students majoring in the humanities. ~ Amity Shlaes

The average college graduate's proficient literacy in English [the ability to read lengthy, complex texts and draw complicated inferences] has declined from 40 percent in 1992 to 31 percent ten years later. ~ Charles Colson

People compared Garden State to the Graduate, but when was the last time you saw Dustin Hoffman doing what I do? ~ Zach Braff

the entering seminarian today has the faculties of a sixth- to eighth-grader sixty years ago, and the seminary curriculum cannot make this seminarian an adult by the time he graduates. ~ T. David Gordon

In 1858 I received the degree of D. S. from the Lawrence Scientific School, and thereafter remained on the rolls of the university as a resident graduate. ~ Simon Newcomb

Too many Christians are fighting graduate school sins with a grammar school knowledge of God. ~ John Piper

The modern school without systematic lectures turns out many graduates who lack retention. No sooner has the sound of the word left their teacher's lips, the subject has been forgotten. ~ Arturo Alfonso Schomburg

Do Libertarians care about the poor? Well, we're not ladening them down with debt, we're not sending them off to God damned wars, we're not creating a permanent underclass, we're not trapping them in shitty schools where they graduate unable to read, WE DO CARE ABOUT THE POOR, and that's why we want the State out of their way!! ~ Stefan Molyneux

Knowing what you're aiming for is essential. In a famous study of Yale University students, researchers found that only 3% had written goals with plans for their achievement. Twenty years later researchers interviewed the surviving graduates and found that those 3% were worth more financially than the other 97% combined. ~ Karen McCreadie

I wasn't allowed to see movies when I was a child. It was against the religion I was raised in, Fundamentalist Baptist. I didn't go into a commercial movie house until I was a senior in college, and that was on the sly. It wasn't until I was in graduate school that I immersed myself in films. Then, I went to see all the films by Bergman, Fellini, etc. ~ Wes Craven

In a lot of ways, work was my graduate school. ~ Christopher Bollen

The state of our educational system is a disgrace to our country. We have an elementary and secondary school system in which close to half of the youngsters never graduate properly. It's a disgrace that there is more illiteracy today than there was 100 years ago. ~ Milton Friedman

I'd say Harvard graduates leave here with a sense of the possible and the limit - and a sense that there are no limits to what humans can do and that you can always be pushing, whatever limit you think might be there. ~ Drew Gilpin Faust

The loan crisis and the increasing slashing of funds for students, coupled with the astronomical rise in tuition, represent an unparalleled attack on the social state. The hidden agenda here is that when students graduate with such high debts, they rarely choose a career in public service; instead, they are forced to go into the corporate sector, and I see these conditions, in some ways, as being very calculated and as part of a larger political strategy to disempower students. ~ Henry Giroux

The quality of authors determines the quality of books.
The quality of musicians determines the quality of songs.
The quality of artists determines the quality of paintings.
The quality of architects determines the quality of buildings.

The quality of generals determines the quality of warriors.
The quality of preachers determines the quality of sermons.
The quality of scientists determines the quality of inventions.
The quality of leaders determines the quality of followers.

The quality of scholars determines the quality of lectures.
The quality of teachers determines the quality of students.
The quality of schools determines the quality of graduates.
The quality of graduates determines the quality of nations.

The quality of plants determines the quality of air.
The quality of air determies the quality of animals.
The quality of animals determines the quality of food.
The quality of food determines the quality of the planet. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

DON'T QUIT NOW
Successful graduates from the school of life thrive on failed attempts
Kamil Ali ~ Kamil Ali

Young professionals seeking cities to live and work in, and a wave of immigrants in inner-city neighborhoods and inner suburbs that eventually produced second-generation college graduates who moved into the center city to live and work. These groups joined the gays and artists who have always chosen to live in urban communities.12 Edward Glaeser points out that not all cities have succeeded in the past generation - and he points to Detroit, Michigan, and Leipzig, Germany, as examples. But most cities have found the power to reinvent themselves, argues Glaeser, because the essence of what makes a city a city is the bringing of people together to innovate. At one level, this means bringing together the most highly trained and talented people, the "elites." Yet at another level, it means bringing together the most energetic, ambitious, and risk-taking people from among the ~ Timothy Keller

The 'Cheetah Generation' refers to the new and angry generation of young African graduates and professionals, who look at African issues and problems from a totally different and unique perspective. ~ George Ayittey

The truth is when I went to graduate school I would've said I was among the least talented of the students, I was certainly the least smart, or less educated. But I worked very hard. ~ Mary Karr

It's so important to understand your good attendance ups your chances of graduating. ~ Tyra Banks

If you want to be an anthropologist, you need to study physical anthropology specialized in bones. If you want to be a forensic chemist, get a degree in chemistry. Do you want to do DNA work? Get a degree in microbiology. And do well. Study hard and go to graduate school. ~ Kathy Reichs

Time will solve all the problems Chinese school graduates face. In our bilingual society, there are no more Chinese school graduates, only English school graduates who can speak Mandarin. These English school graduates probably can also read and write Chinese, but they did not go to a Chinese school, and they act and think differently from us. Drawing a line between us, they would never say they graduated from a Chinese school, because former Chinese school graduates, that is, the vanishing group of people that includes us, are second-class citizens. They, on the other hand, belong to the first class, the Chinese elite, English school graduates who are fluent in Chinese. ~ Yeng Pway Ngon

I didn't have to go to school, graduate and then go, What am I going to do? I knew from the beginning. ~ Irene Cara

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

My personal advice is to go to school first and get a liberal arts education, and then if you want to pursue acting, go to graduate school. ~ Jillian Bach

As far as other important people go, university president Richard Levin believes "there are many ways to contribute to the well-being of society, and there are many forms of public service." He rejects the notion that "people who choose a business career aren't interested in being public-spirited," asserting that "what's outstanding about Yale graduates is that whatever career they choose, they end up being active participants in the civic life of the communities in which they live. ~ Marina Keegan

I went to NYU graduate film school and met Pam [Romanowsky], and after doing a few things with her I thought she had the right sensibility and that she could figure it [The Adderall Diaries] out. ~ James Franco

Research shows us that children who are read to from a very early age are more likely to begin reading themselves at an early age. They're more likely to excell in school. They're more likely to graduate secondary school and go to college. ~ Laura Bush

When I first came to Arsenal, I realised the back four were all university graduates in the art of defending. As for Tony Adams, I consider him to be a doctor of defence. He is simply outstanding. ~ Arsene Wenger

Travel is the best and probably cheapest graduate school you can buy. ~ Tom Freston

In the last years of the nineteen-eighties, I worked not at startups but at what might be called finish-downs. Tech companies that were dying would hire temps - college students and new graduates - to do what little was left of the work of the employees they'd laid off. ~ Jill Lepore

I had a Masters of Fine Arts, but so did thousands of other graduates every year, and we were all competing for the same jobs. I realistically didn't expect to become a teacher, and after two or three years, I accepted defeat. ~ Kurt Wagner

You will find the key to success under the alarm clock. ~ Benjamin Franklin

BJ Novak gets the Perseverance Award for graduating from Harvard and being unemployed for the entire plane ride to Los Angeles. ~ Andy Kindler

It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply. ~ A.W. Tozer

If America's universities are indeed poor value for money, why might that be? The main reason is that the market for higher education, like that for health care, does not work well. The government rewards universities for research, so that is what professors concentrate on. Students are looking for a degree from an institution that will impress employers; employers are interested primarily in the selectivity of the institution a candidate has attended. Since the value of a degree from a selective institution depends on its scarcity, good universities have little incentive to produce more graduates. ~ Anonymous

I received $100 per week when I started working at the Globe after graduation. ~ Will McDonough

If you were very bright and you became head of a department, as I did, of the psychology department, you were encouraged to go on to graduate work. But as a women you didn't even think about discrimination. ~ Betty Friedan

After graduating in the summer of 1980, I knew I wanted my life to count. ~ Donna Rice

The world is the schoolroom of God. Our being in school does not make us learn, but within that school is the opportunity for all learning. It has its grades and its classes, its sciences and its arts, and admission to it is the birthright of man. Its graduates are its teachers, its pupils are all created things. Its examples are Mature, and its rules are God's laws. Those who would go into the greater colleges and universities must first, day by day, and year by year, work through the common school of life and present to their new teachers the diplomas they have won, upon which is written the name that none may read save those who have received it. The hours may be long, and the teachers cruel, but each of us must walk that path, and the only ones ready to go onward are those who have passed through the gateway of experience. ~ Manly P. Hall

Let me tell you a joke, Rora said.
Mujo wakes up one day, after a long night of drinking, and asks himself what the meaning of life is. He goes to work, but realizes that is not what life is or should be. He decides to read some philosophy and for years studies everything from the old Greeks onward, but can't find the meaning of life. Maybe it's the family, he thinks, so he spends time with his wife, Fata, and the kids, but finds no meaning in that and so he leaves them. He thinks, Maybe helping others is the meaning of life, so he goes to medical school, graduates with flying colors, goes to Africa to cure malaria and transplants hearts, but cannot discover the meaning of life. He thinks, maybe it's the wealth, so he becomes a businessman, starts making money hand over fist, millions of dollars, buys everything there is to buy, but that is not what life is about. Then he turns to poverty and humility and such, so he gives everything away and begs on the streets, but still he cannot see what life is. He thinks maybe it is literature: he writes novel upon novel, but the more he writes the more obscure the meaning of life becomes. He turns to God, lives the life of a dervish, reads and contemplates the Holy Book of Islam - still, nothing. He studies Christianity, then Judaism, then Buddhism, then everything else - no meaning of life there. Finally, he hears about a guru living high up in the mountains somewhere in the East. The guru, they say, knows what the meaning of lif ~ Aleksandar Hemon

To be totally candid, it was really born out of a panic attack the summer between my sophomore and junior years, when I realized I wasn't going to graduate in four years unless I somehow managed to glue together all the courses I'd taken. That said, I'm really glad I did it, 'cause it was really fun, and I was able to just take whatever the hell I wanted. ~ Ed Helms

I don't look to find an educated person in the ranks of university graduates, necessarily. Some of the most educated people I know have never been near a university. ~ John Keegan

But I decided I wanted more education and I had to make a choice between starting law school, which was interesting to me, and going for a graduate degree in engineering. ~ Daniel J. Evans

It doesn't matter how far you might rise. At some point you are bound to stumble ... If you're constantly pushing yourself higher ... the law of averages, not to mention the Myth of Icarus, predicts that you will at some point fall. And when you do I want you to know this, remember this: There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction. ~ Oprah Winfrey

We don't stop going to school when we graduate. ~ Carol Burnett

Though we do need more women to graduate with technical degrees, I always like to remind women that you don't need to have science or technology degrees to build a career in tech. ~ Susan Wojcicki

Toby Keith, when you wake up tomorrow there's still going to be liberals in the world, mexicans and blacks, Muslims and Jews and high school graduates ... and everyone else who hates your music. ~ Maureen McCormick

A segregated school system produces children who, when they graduate, they do with crippled minds. ~ Malcolm X

Graduates, your values matter. They are your north star. And work takes on new meaning when you feel you're pointed in the right direction. Otherwise, it's just a job. And life is too short for that. ~ Tim Cook

I love the feeling of letting fly, of pushing as far as I could go with my voice. The only way you can really graduate how you do it is by doing it regularly to people who don't have to be super impressed. You can do it in the studio all day long but you don't get the flashback that you get onstage. ~ Robert Plant

I told my mom I would graduate. I owe that much to her and myself. ~ Carmelo Anthony

No Arab country produces graduates who can compete with their East Asian counterparts; the only Muslim country whose graduates meet world standards is Turkey. University graduates throughout the Arab world have miserable prospects. "The average unemployment rate for the age group 15-24 years in the Group of Arab Countries reaches to 30%, compared with an average rate of world 14.4%," according to the Arab Labor Organization. "Problem [sic] of high unemployment rates among the educated graduates from universities and colleges, which reaches to 26.8% in Morocco and 19.3% in Algeria, 17.7 % in Jordan. It was noted that 94% of the unemployed in the Arab Republic of Egypt are in the age group 15-29 years, reflecting a lack of consistency of education plans to the needs of the Labor market."9 ~ David Goldman

I did graduate with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering in 1948. ~ Daniel J. Evans

...a school's worth should be measured not by how its students perform on standardized tests but by how well they function as adult graduates of the school... ~ Terry Roberts

Earlier today, Arnold Schwarzenegger criticized the California school system, calling it disastrous. Arnold says California's schools are so bad that its graduates are willing to vote for me. ~ Conan O'Brien

Nor did it go unnoticed by the latest litter of Archimboldians, recent graduates, boys and girls, their doctorates tucked still warm under their arms, who planned, by any means necessary, to impose their particular readings of Archimboldi, like missionaries ready to instill faith in God, even if to do so meant signing a pact with the devil, for most were what you might call rationalists, not in the philosophical sense but in the pejorative literal sense, denoting people less interested in literature than in literary criticism, the one field, according to them - some of them, anyway - where revolution was still possible, and in some way they behaved not like youths but like nouveaux youths, in the sense that there are the rich and the nouveaux riches, all of them generally rational thinkers, let us repeat, although often incapable of telling their asses from their elbows, ~ Roberto Bolano

I was an English major in college, and then I went to graduate school in English at the University of North Carolina for three years. ~ Elizabeth Edwards

By the time these students enter the workforce, many of the jobs they will apply for ill be in industries that don't even exist yet. That's a hard future to prepare someone for. Teachers have their sights set on the real goal: not to produce Ivy League graduates, but to encourage the development of naturally curious, confident, flexible, and happy learners who are ready for whatever the future has in store. ~ Taylor Mali

I'm going to graduate on time, no matter how long it takes. ~ Joe Theismann

America's a hard school, I know, but hard schools make excellent graduates. ~ Oriana Fallaci

Andrew Hacker argues that algebra and trigonometry and calculus are subjects that almost nobody used after they graduate, and so why should we continue to compel students to try to pass them? ~ Anya Kamenetz

My husband and I were excited about having a kid - it was having a baby that had us worried. We had a lot to learn, so like good liberal arts graduates, we signed up for a class. ~ Chelsea Cain

Now consider Google, one of the largest, richest, and respected companies in the world. Guess what – they don't hire new college graduates based on SAT or GPA41. Google believes that top students lack "intellectual humility." In other words when they make a mistake, "it's not my fault." For Google, the ability to learn from mistakes (like C students do), is more important than test scores or class rank. Google believes that top students seldom fail in school and, therefore, are deprived of the opportunity to learn from failure. ~ Mark Mullen

Normally, if someone goes bankrupt, you wipe out the debt and get a fresh start. But that's not permitted with student loans. So the effect is to impoverish many graduates with very high debts. ~ Michael Hudson

When it comes to educating all of us about the most basic things in life, it seems to me we need more kindergartens and fewer graduate schools. ~ Andy Rooney

One of the greatest benefits of the revolution is that even our prostitutes are college graduates. ~ Fidel Castro

All we had aboard the ship that morning was one Annapolis graduate and three reserves. ~ Barney Ross

I am one of the graduates of the William Morris famous, famous mail room from the '60s. ~ Irwin Winkler

My parents wanted me to be smart and be a scholar, and the best I could do was graduate high school. ~ Levon Helm

I regularly tell our seminary students that if I happen to visit the church in which one of them serves, I will not ask first, "Is this man a good preacher?" Rather, first of all I will ask the secretaries, office staff, janitors, and cleaners what it is like to work for this pastor. I will ask, "What kind of man is he? Is he a servant? Is he demanding and harsh, or his he patient, kind, and forbearing as a man in authority?" One of our graduates may preach great sermons, but if he is a pain to work for, then you know he will cause major problems in any congregation. Leaders in the church are required by Scripture to set an example in the areas of love, kindness, gentleness, patience, and forbearance before they are appointed to preach, teach, and rule. If we obediently require these attitudes and character traits of our leaders, what will our "new community" look like ~ Jerram Barrs

Well, the wonderful thing about making movies, oddly enough, is that they're sort of highly motivated graduate studies in one or another field. ~ Sydney Pollack

But our goal, remember, is to feed around our table the people we love. We're not chefs or restaurateurs or culinary school graduates, and we shouldn't try to be. Make it the way the people you love want to eat it. ~ Shauna Niequist

My advice to graduates is to stay positive. Life is short, and you'll be dead soon. ~ Greg Giraldo

Nothing in a graduate degree in art history prepares you for the eloquence of the eraser. ~ Adam Gopnik

And after about two years, I realized that creative writing was not going to help you ace those biological tests. So I switched over to journalism. I didn't graduate with honors, but I did graduate on time and with some doing. ~ Bob Schieffer

There are stories - legends, really - of the "steady job." Old-timers gather graduates around the flickering light of a computer monitor and tell stories of how the company used to be, back when a job was for life, not just for the business cycle. ... The graduates snicker. A steady job! They've never heard of such a thing. ~ Max Barry

Leaning to your true feelings isn't something you're born knowing how to do. It requires practice. The great news is that these skills are like muscles, the more you use them, the stronger they get.
... And trust me, the more you listen, the louder that voice will get. ~ Rachel Simmons

I would staple a green card to the diploma of anyone that graduates with a degree in the physical sciences or engineering in the U.S. ~ John Doerr

If you have a student who graduates from college and they don't have a job, they are now able to stay on their family health plan. ~ Jacob Lew

If you want to work for Vogue, produce films, or open a restaurant, you had better get immense psychological reward from your gig, as the comp, and returns on your efforts, will likely suck. Competition will be fierce, and even if you manage to get in, you'll be easily replaceable, as there are always younger, hipper candidates nipping at your heels. Very few high-school graduates dream of working for Exxon, but a big firm in a large sector would give you a career trajectory with regular promotions a sexy industry won't. ~ Scott Galloway

The environmental issues we face today are complex and span many knowledge domains. This undergraduate degree programme in Environmental Studies will nurture a pool of graduates who are able to think deeply and broadly about these issues, and help develop novel solutions for Singapore, Asia and beyond. I am delighted at this programme for another reason - it is the first undergraduate course that draws on expertise from eight Faculties in NUS, making full use of the comprehensive strengths of our University. ~ Tan Chorh Chuan

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. ~ Steve Jobs

I would not say I am looking for God. Or, I am not looking for God precisely. I am not seeking the God I learned about as a Catholic child, as an 18-year-old novice in a religious community, as an agnostic graduate student, as - but who cares about my disguises? Or God's. ~ Mary Rose O'Reilley

The man who graduates today and stops learning tomorrow is uneducated the day after. ~ Newton D. Baker

When I left home after graduating high school, I left as a migrant agricultural worker with a Modern Library edition of Plato in my duffel bag. It sounds kind of crazy, but I loved it. I loved the stuff. Before I knew there was a subject called philosophy, I loved it. ~ Dallas Willard

I spent eighteen months as a graduate student in physics at Columbia University, waiting unhappily for an opportunity to work in a laboratory and wondering if I should continue in physics. ~ Sidney Altman

About 1990 there was a huge shakeup in the music industry and the 6 major record companies fired all the music people and hired business graduates to take over the spots. So the music became not as important. What really became important was the bottom line, how much money you could make. ~ Geoff Tate

As sci-fi writer Theodore Sturgeon said, 90 percent of everything is crap. But science fiction has not been forgiven for its crap. The reason is that science fiction inherently distrusts the 'eternal verities' on which literature graduates base their doctoral dissertations. Literature departments were uncomfortable with that. But things change. ~ David Brin

More women are graduating from college now than men. ~ Mitch McConnell

The proper aim of education is to promote significant learning. Significant learning entails development. Development means successively asking broader and deeper questions of the relationship between oneself and the world. This is as true for first graders as graduate students, for fledging artists as graying accountants. ~ Laurent A. Daloz

I often hear from new graduates that it's better to wait until you have more experience ... But I'm a big believer in the power of inexperience ... The world needs you before you stop asking naive questions and while you have the time to understand the true nature of the complex problems we face and take them on. ~ Wendy Kopp

I started graduate school in 1971, I started working at the Smithsonian in the festival in 1972. I went full-time at the Smithsonian in 1974. And I got my doctorate in 1975. ~ Bernice Johnson Reagon

We are living in 1937, and our universities, I suggest, are not half-way out of the fifteenth century. We have made hardly any changes in our conception of university organization, education, graduation, for a century - for several centuries. ~ H.G.Wells

Before the Sex Pistols, music was so bloody serious, all run by university graduates. It was all head music devoid of any real intellectualism. There was no deep though in it, merely images pertaining to something mystical, too stupid and absolutely devoid of reality. How on earth were we supposed to relate to that music when we lived in council flats? We had no money, no job, no nothing. So the Pistols projected that anger, that rock-bottom working-class hate. ~ John Lydon

When I started graduate school we did this publishing class where we learned about submitting and read interviews with editors from different magazines. A lot of them said they got so many submissions that unless the first page stuck out or the first paragraph or even the first sentence they'll probably send it back. So part of my idea was that if I have a really good first sentence maybe they'll read on a bit further. At least half, maybe more of the stories in Knockemstiff started with the first sentence; I got it down then went from there. ~ Donald Ray Pollock

Education is something that should not be organized on a for-profit basis, because in that case its purpose is not really to provide an education. It's not to teach students how to get better work, but how to provide banks with a free giveaway opportunity from the government, by making junk loans that are defaulted on. The effect may be to wreck the futures of the graduates that fall for the false promises that are being made. ~ Michael Hudson

I am old enough to remember when America's K-12 public schools were the best in the world. I am a proud graduate of them, and I credit much of my success to what I learned in Detroit Public Schools and at Michigan State University. ~ Eli Broad

Sanders had fought the B-school mentality that she exemplified. After watching these graduates come and go, Sanders had finally concluded that there was a fundamental flaw in their education. They had been trained to believe that they were equipped to manage anything. But there was no such thing as general managerial skill and tools. ~ Michael Crichton