High School Diploma Quotes

If grade inflation continues, a college bachelor's degree will have just as much credibility as a high school diploma. ~ Walter E. Williams

Cities are broke, there are no jobs, people without a high school diploma and sometimes even with a college degree can't get jobs. ~ Rachel Grady

Yet the life expectancy for white people without a high school diploma has dropped catastrophically since the 1990s - down by five years for women, three years for men - suggesting a cultural crisis among poor whites akin to that in Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed. Yet the morally preening powerful, confident in their supposedly progressive views, largely ignore this collapse and the people suffering from it. ~ R. R. Reno

It's amnesty that America can't afford. We have to stop people from coming in illegally. This will be a green light for anyone who wants to come to America illegally and then be granted citizenship one day ... The majority that are here illegally are low-skilled or may not even have a high school diploma. The Republican Party is not going to compete over who can give more social programs out. They will become Democrats because of the social programs they'll depend on. ~ Lou Barletta

Let's also make sure that a high school diploma puts our kids on a path to a good job. Right now, countries like Germany focus on graduating their high school students with the equivalent of a technical degree from one of our community colleges, so that they're ready for a job. At schools like P-TECh in Brooklyn ... students will graduate with a high school diploma and an associate degree in computers or engineering. We need to give every American student opportunities like this. ~ Barack Obama

Avoiding School or Dropping Out

Unfortunately, school sometimes becomes so difficult for people with social anxiety that they start avoiding it as much as they can. This has a serious effect on a person's future. It is difficult to get a good job with a decent salary if you do not have a high school diploma. If you drop out, you are setting yourself up for a difficult time.

Cedric has always had a hard time in school because of his extreme social anxiety. He feels uncomfortable with his classmates and avoids speaking with them. During classes, he always sits in the back and never participates. When teachers call on him, he usually mumbles "I don't know." As a result of his social anxiety, he has low self-esteem and suffers from depression.
One day, he decided that it didn't matter if he went to school or not. Some mornings, he hides in the yard until his mother leaves for work, and then he stays in his room all day. Other times, he wanders around the woods.
Cedric has no idea what he wants to do with his life. He knows it is only a matter of time before his mother finds out he has been missing school. He wishes he could just hide and hibernate. Deep down, he knows he has a problem, but he doesn't know what to do about it. Secretly, he hopes his mother forces him to see a therapist because he is afraid of what the rest of his life is going to be like. ~ Heather Moehn

As a high school dropout, I understand the value of education: A second chance at obtaining my high school diploma through the G.I. Bill led me to attend college and law school and allowed me the opportunity to serve in Congress. ~ Charles B. Rangel

If there are #coffee stains on my @Harvard application, it's because I was up all night Photoshopping a high school diploma. Please accept my apology, and please accept me. ~ Jarod Kintz

What drives intellectuals and professors crazy is somebody with a high school diploma who made a fortune in business. They agree with Lenin, who thought success in business was a matter of luck, when in reality it is a matter of genius. ~ James Cook

My parents were not affluent people and were not - didn't come from the extremities of education. My mother had a high school diploma. I often think I so wish she'd come out of the hills in Appalachia and been able to go on to college. I think she would have made a wonderful teacher. ~ Dwight Yoakam

By the time I left the bar, I was 30. I was a dishwasher. They call it a bar-back, but essentially, I washed dishes for a living. I had no high-school diploma, I had no agent, and my literary successes were non-existent ... but it was the only thing I ever wanted to do, so I did feel trapped. ~ Patrick DeWitt

Expertise is the mantra of modern medicine. In the early twentieth century, you needed only a high school diploma and a one-year medical degree to practice medicine. By the century's end, all doctors had to have a college degree, a four-year medical degree, and an additional three to seven years of residency training in an individual field of practice - pediatrics, surgery, neurology, or the like. In recent years, though, even this level of preparation has not been enough for the new complexity of medicine. ~ Atul Gawande

Most of my friends from Columbia are going on to get advanced degrees. And why not? A Ph.D. is the new M.A., a master's is the new bachelor's, a B.A. is the new high school diploma, and a high school diploma is the new smiley-face sticker on your first-grade spelling test. ~ Megan McCafferty

I'll show you Obama's birth certificate when you show me Sarah Palin's high school diploma. ~ Bill Maher

He got his driver's license, he got his high school diploma, he got his university degree. He got a worried little furrow between his eyes. He did what he thought was expected of him, and brought the official pieces of paper home to her like a cat bringing dead mice. Now it's as if he's given up because he doesn't know what else to bring; he's run out of ideas. ~ Margaret Atwood

Useless labor, that I feared would stay in my mind, extending into me, into everything. On the occasion of both funerals I made plans ahead of time to visit Pasquale. In those years I did that whenever I could. In prison he had studied a lot, had received his high school diploma, and, recently, a ~ Elena Ferrante

I can't really blame a lot of young sisters and brothers who believe that education has anything to offer them. Because as a matter of fact, it has nothing to offer them. Suppose they do get a high school diploma that is meaningful. What kind of job is awaiting them. The jobs that used to be available to working class people are not there as a result of the de-industrialization of this economy. ~ Angela Davis

The U.S. Census Bureau acknowledged this fact when it reported that those with a bachelor's degree earn on average $1 million more over their lifetime than those with only a high school diploma. ~ Elijah Cummings

The notion that college education is a cost-effective way to help poor, low-skill, unmarried mothers with high school diplomas or GEDs move up the economic ladder is just wrong. ~ Rick Santorum

showed that even with the considerable increase in the average level of education over the course of the twentieth century, earned income inequality did not decrease. Qualification levels shifted upward: a high school diploma now represents what a grade school certificate used to mean, a college degree what a high school diploma used to stand for, and so on. ~ Thomas Piketty

The people who run the major banks have MBAs and wear suits. And when those people in suits come to the homes of people who don't have a high school diploma, don't even speak English, and offer them a home at zero percent down, that doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense. ~ Ramin Bahrani

The way my brain processes information is quite odd. I mean, I have Attention Deficit Disorder and another learning disability I can't even spell. I don't even have a high school diploma. I'm smart, but you can't prove it on paper. ~ Ron White

I am going to give you a piece of advice ... advice I wish I'd been told in guidance class back in high school, in between the don't-do-acid and don't-drink-and-drive films. I wish our counselors had told us, 'When you grow older a dreadful, horrible sensation will come over you. It's called loneliness, and you think you know what it is now, but you don't. Here is the list of the symptoms, and don't worry - loneliness is the most universal sensation on the planet. Just remember one fact - loneliness will pass. You will survive and you will be a better human for it. ~ Douglas Coupland

I feel like all the parts are seniors in high school and seventh graders, and I think I kinda skipped that awkward stage by not working those years. ~ Nat Wolff

It's just snow," Lesa said, rolling her eyes. "It's not going to hurt you."
Kimmy smoothed her hands over her blond hair. "Sugar melts."
"Yeah, and shit floats." Lesa took her seat, yanking out last night's English homework. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

All of my high school male teachers were WWII and/or Korean War veterans. They taught my brothers and me the value of service to our country and reinforced what our dad had shown us about the meaning of service. ~ Oliver North

I used to play soccer when I was in Morocco, but I was more of a basketball player. I played high school basketball, I played AAU basketball. ~ French Montana

In high school, I taught dance classes for 3-year-olds up to 16-year-olds, so between that and some bat mitzvah money, I saved up a pretty good nest egg to move to L.A. ~ Dianna Agron

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

American democracy is a chess-game in which pawns imagine themselves to be free individuals with wills of their own: that delusion is one of the rules of the game, without which the game could not continue. I doubt anyone, no matter how sharp and sharp-tongued, could succeed in getting across to high school students how vital an acute mind is for just keeping a grip on one's life and earnings in our mendacious politics and economics. No wonder our school system is devoutly dedicated to demoralizing and blunting such minds. ~ Kenny Smith

They had been pathetically eager to have the wedding in the family church. Their reaction though, as far as she could estimate the reactions of people who were now so remote from her, was less elated glee than a quiet, rather smug satisfaction, as though their fears about the effects of her university education, never stated but aways apparent, had been calmed at last. They had probably been worried she would turn into a high-school teacher or a maiden aunt or a dope addict or a female executive, or that she would undergo some shocking physical transformation, like developing muscles and a deep voice or growing moss. ~ Margaret Atwood

I haven't taught since 2004, but I taught high school English for seven years, primarily at a place called Haddonfield Memorial, which is in a very well-to-do-community in Southern New Jersey. ~ Matthew Quick

To all the kids from the "special" reading class back in high school (the one where you tried to form words using wooden blocks)
PLEASE stop telling me that I can't blame an "inanimate object" for the off-the-hook gun violence in this country. YES! ... I CAN!!! I blame all the "inanimate objects" in Congress who refuse to pass sensible gun legislation because they're too chicken-shit to take on Wayne LaPierre and the gun lobby. ~ Quentin R. Bufogle

What am I? Chopped liver? Is there some specific reason he never pulls me over close to him as we drive around the countryside? Why doesn't he hook his right arm affectionately around my neck and claim me as the woman of his pickup? I never knew I had such a yearning to ride next to a man in a pickup, but apparently it had been a suppressed lifelong dream I knew nothing about. Suddenly, sitting in that pickup with Marlboro Man, I'd apparently never wanted anything so badly in my life.
I couldn't keep quiet about it any longer. "So…," I began. Was it just a high school thing? Or worse, I imagined, is it just that I'm not and never will be a country girl? Is it that country girls have some wild sense of abandon that I wasn't born with? A reckless side, a fun, adventurous side that makes them worthy of riding next to boys in pickups? Am I untouchable? Am I too prim? Too proper? I'm not! I'm really not! I'm fun and adventurous. Reckless, too! I have a pair of jeans: Anne Kleins! And I want to be Middle Seat Worthy. Please, Marlboro Man…please. I've never wanted anything this much. "So, um…why don't you do it anymore?" I asked.
"Bucket seats," Marlboro Man answered, his hand still resting on my leg.
Made sense. I settled in and relaxed a bit. ~ Ree Drummond

Hairstyles change, and skirt lengths, and slang, but high school administrations? Never. ~ Stephen King

I was going to be a High School teacher. I was studying at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, up in Canada. I was also acting in a wonderfully supportive theatre community in Edmonton. There's a lot of support for theatre there. So, I was having a great time, but I didn't consider acting as a serious career initially, because even the most successful actors that I know in Edmonton are not super successful. Acting over there is just not a success-oriented career. ~ Nathan Fillion

Worrying about money is one of the worst worries. It's like having locked-in syndrome, except you're still moving around and doing things. Your head burns. If other people are not having money problems, it pisses you off because it reminds you that you're limited in the ways you can express your agency in the world, and they aren't. Worrying about money is anger-inducing because it makes you think about time: how many dollars per hour, how much salary per year, how many years until retirement. Worrying about money forces you to do endless math in your head, and most people didn't like math in high school and they don't like it now. ~ Douglas Coupland

I always knew the teachers were out to get me. ~ Amy Joy

I felt that way not because I never once discovered any palpable hard young throat to crush among the masculine mutes that flickered somewhere in the background; but because it was to me "overwhelmingly obvious" (a favorite expression with my aunt Sybil) that all varieties of high school boys - from the perspiring nincompoop whom "holding hands" thrills, to the self-sufficient rapist with pustules and a souped-up car - equally bored my sophisticated young mistress. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

The interest I felt in certain guys then confused me, because it wasn't romantic, but I wasn't sure what else it might be. But now I know: I wanted to take up people's time making jokes, to tease the dean in front of the entire school, to call him by a nickname. What I wanted was to be a cocky high-school boy, so fucking sure of my place in the world. ~ Curtis Sittenfeld

The parents are making threatening noises, turning dinner into performance art, with dad doing his Arnold Schwarzenegger imitation and mom playing Glenn Close in one of her psycho roles. I am the Victim.
Mom: [creepy smile] "Thought you could put one over us, did you, Melinda? Big high school students now, don't need to show your homework to your parents, don't need to show any failing test grades?"
Dad: [bangs table, silverware jumps] "Cut the crap. She knows what's up. The interim reports came today. Listen to me, young lady. I'm only going to say this to you once. You get those grades up or your name is mud. Hear me? Get them up!" [Attacks baked potato.] ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

I went to an all-girls school for part of high school, and the idea of boys was amazing to me; like, all I ever wanted to do was kiss boys and be around boys. ~ Alexandra Daddario

The mystery school continued throughout the greater Egyptian civilization, which was the second age of humankind and later on into the third age of humankind when the Indian, Chinese, Japanese and Tibetan high cultures flourished ~ Frederick Lenz

A lot of kids are bullied because of their sexuality, and that breaks my heart, because they're going to have to - high school's hard enough to overcome. Middle school is hard enough to overcome when we get out of it. They say life is what you spend your time getting over because of high school, you know what I mean? ~ Kristin Chenoweth

At first I was like, No way am I saying that, but when you hang out with people who are always being supergrateful and appreciating things and saying thank you, in the end it kind of rubs off, and one day after I'd flushed, I turned to the toilet and said, "Thanks, toilet," and it felt pretty natural. I mean, it's the kind of thing that's okay to do if you're in a temple on the side of a mountain, but you'd better not try it in your junior high school washroom, because if your classmates catch you bowing and thanking the toilet they'll try to drown you in it. I explained this to Jiko, and she agreed it wasn't such a good idea, but that it was okay just to feel grateful sometimes, even if you don't say anything. Feeling is the important part. You don't have to make a big deal about it. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Life expectancy continues to rise in most of the rest of the industrialized world, but in the United States it has dropped for three years in a row - for the first time in a century. As we'll see, American kids today are 55 percent more likely to die by the age of nineteen than children in the other rich countries that are members of the OECD, the club of industrialized nations. America now lags behind its peer countries in health care and high-school graduation rates while suffering greater violence, poverty and addiction. This dysfunction damages all Americans: it undermines our nation's competitiveness, especially as growing economies like China's are fueled by much larger populations and by rising education levels, and may erode the well-being of our society for decades to come. The losers are not just those at the bottom of society, but all of us. For America to be strong, we must strengthen all Americans. ~ Nicholas D. Kristof

I don't know, you know all through high school I just knew I wanted to do it. ~ Josh Duhamel

You ever buy a book and not read it? You feel almost guilty having it up on a bookshelf. People are like, "Hey, how's that book?" "I haven't read it." "Oh, did you just buy it?" "I've had it since high school." "Well, can I borrow it?" "No." ~ Jim Gaffigan

Today, only a fool would offer herself as the singular role model for the Good Mother. Most of us know not to tempt the fates. Themoment I felt sure I had everything under control would invariably be the moment right before the principal called to report that one of my sons had just driven somebody's motorcycle through the high school gymnasium. ~ Mary Blakely

I think that you should definitely listen to what people say, because everyone says it: High school is not the real world. ~ Katy Perry

Looks like they might cancel school on Monday. Woot!
Information like this coming from Lucy is generally pretty reliable, since she happens to live right next door to Mrs. Crawford, the principal of Magnolia Branch High.
Yay, I can sit home and watch more Weather Channel! I text back.
This is an intervention--step away from the TV! NOW!
I laugh aloud at that. It's such a typical Lucy-like thing to say.
My mom's worried about you. Wants you to pack up and come over here.
Can't. But Ryder's coming over if the storm gets bad.
Lucy's next text is just a line of googly eyes.
Not funny, I type, even though it kind of us.
You two can plan your wedding menu. Choose your linens. Stuff like that, she texts, followed by a smiley face.
I gaze at my phone with a frown. Also not funny. ~ Kristi Cook

I do remember in high school I wanted to be a disc jockey. ~ Calvin Trillin

A lot of kids think high school represents the best years of their lives, but others recognize that it's mostly irrelevant bullshit, and that life doesn't even begin until afterward. ~ Paula Stokes

I did some plays in high school. Yes. Never took it that seriously. My parents, however, wanted me to go to college. My grades weren't exactly spectacular so they figured acting might be a necessary back door into some school. ~ Samuel Witwer

By the time she turned fifteen, all of that was gone. She hardly spoke in class. She refused to function in any sort of school event, and rather than discuss her feelings she deferred the world with a hard and perfectly practiced smile.

Apparently - if her sister is to be believed - Karen spent every night of her fourteenth year composing that smile in front of a blue plastic handled mirror. Tragically her creation proved flawless and though her near aphonia should have alarmed any adept teacher or guidance counselor, it was invariably rewarded with the pyritic prize of high school popularity. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski