High School Dropout Quotes

High school dropout rates nationally - Not enough is being done on this issue. ~ Cedric Richmond

Bluntly put, there's no chance that your doctor, dentist, or attorney is a high-school dropout. Your stockbroker, however, just might be. ~ William J. Bernstein

Appearing as a character in my brother's books taught me something about myself. For most of my life, my history as an abused child with what I saw as a personality defect was shameful and embarrassing. Being a failure and a high school dropout was humiliating, no matter how well I subsequently did. I lied about my age, my education, and my upbringing for years because the truth was just too horrible to reveal. His book, and people's remarkable acceptance of us as we are, changed all that. I was finally free. ~ John Elder Robison

I can say that when you model,when you get to a certain age, that's it for you. I remember there was a time where I was like, 'What am I going to do with my life?' I am a high school dropout who's only modeled. So there was desperation with that. ~ Rene Russo

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

I had to fend for myself from the time I was 17 years old. I was a high-school dropout. I wasn't quite living on the streets, but I didn't have a lot of hope. ~ Rene Russo

High school dropouts are forfeiting their opportunity to pursue the American Dream. ~ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

I'm not a film-school guy. I was a high-school dropout. I was on a nuclear submarine. I was an electrician. I was a house painter. ~ David Ayer

I'm a skinny, geeky, high school dropout - it works, kids! Sensitive guys always get the girl. You'll get laid 10 times as much as that guy on the football team 'cause he's on steroids and he's gonna get fat. ~ Dave Grohl

Before I moved to Brooklyn to pursue music, I was a high school dropout and speed freak who'd been living with her dealer boyfriend in Bucks County, Pennsylvania at 16. ~ Britta Phillips

I was a high-school dropout; I was a loner. ~ Rene Russo

Eighty-two percent of prisoners in the United States are high-school dropouts. A high-school dropout between the ages of 30 and 34 is two-thirds more likely to be in jail, or to have been in jail, or to be dead. ~ Kamala Harris

I'm this high school dropout. I quit in my sophomore year, when I was 15. I worked for a while in a deli, and when I was almost 17, I got married. ~ Mary Beth Whitehead

The University of North Carolina-Greensboro has ordered a Christian club to allow non-Christians as leaders. While we're at it, let's put high school dropouts in charge of the University. ~ Fred Thompson

If you had walked through the pleasant Tuscan countryside in the 1890's, you might have come upon a somewhat long-haired teenage high school dropout on the road to Pavia. His teachers in Germany had told him that he would never amount to anything, that his questions destroyed classroom discipline, that he would be better off out of school. So he left and wandered, delighting in the freedom of Northern Italy, where he could ruminate on matters remote from the subjects he had been force-fed in his highly disciplined Prussian schoolroom. His name was Albert Einstein, and his ruminations changed the world. ~ Carl Sagan

Holy crap! I still have to pinch myself that I have not one, but TWO books out there that are Amazon bestsellers and I'm about to publish my third. I just want to shout out to anyone out there that felt like maybe they weren't good enough. YOU ARE! I struggled with this shit for years, but I'm so grateful that I just followed my gut. DON'T let anyone make you feel you are not worth it. This is coming from a high school dropout that only got her GED (Yeah, whatever, nothing to brag about) But is fulfilling her dreams now as a writer. What I'm saying is, take the dive, you may sink for a little, but doggy paddling along of what you want is so much more than learning the proper stroke on things...if that makes any sense? Be YOU and don't give a f*ck!
~Natalie Barnes ~ Natalie Barnes

My history is pretty different from the history of most professors. I was a high school dropout. I dropped out and became a science fiction writer. ~ Daniel Goldstein

I was 19 years old, pumping gas and going nowhere. I was kind of a high school dropout at that point because I had left school to play hockey, but no one drafted me. ~ Adam Oates

I ended up dropping out of high school. I'm a high school dropout, which I'm not proud to say, ... I had some teachers that I still think of fondly and were amazing to me. But I had other teachers who said, 'You know what? This dream of yours is a hobby. When are you going to give it up?' I had teachers who I could tell didn't want to be there. And I just couldn't get inspired by someone who didn't want to be there ~ Hilary Swank

We can't just go, like, oh that'd be cool then not do it. So it's one of those weird things. You gain all these things on your journey. You get smarter. It's interesting how you are who you are in high school in a lot of ways. When I look at my friends, I feel no different about them than I did when I was in high school. I mean that in a great way. They've taken on a micro scale what they were doing and making it bigger. ~ Zack Snyder

I still have a lot of the stories I wrote in high school. Hand wrote ... a number of them are in purple ink, rendering them illegible, a fact we should probably be forever thankful for. ~ Shiloh Walker

Hello,' I say. My voice sounds high and squeaky. I try a lower register. 'Hello.'
Woah. Too low.
'Hello.' Third time's a charm.
They're already chuckling. I've barely even said anything. High school is the worst. ~ Jessica Brody

As a kid, I was into music, played guitar in a band. Then I started acting in plays in junior high school and just got lost in the puzzle of acting, the magic of it. I think it was an escape for me. ~ Michael J. Fox

You drive past your old high school, and even if everybody treated you terribly, you still go take a look, don't you? ~ Patti Scialfa

Anna, baby, you would never be the girl I didn't see, whether we had met now or in high school." He pulls me in close, rubbing his nose along the tip of mine. "Don't you understand? I know you wouldn't be because, since the moment I laid eyes on you, you're all I can see. ~ Kristen Callihan

My God," she says. "I feel like I've gone through a car wash."

I laugh, or force myself to, because it's not something I'd normally laugh at.

"What about you?" she says to Scottie. "How did you make out?"

"I'm a boy," Scottie says. "Look at me."

Sand has gotten into the bottom of her suit, creating a huge bulge. She scratches at the bulge. "I'm going to go to work now," she says. I think she's impersonating me and that Mrs. Speer is getting an unrealistic, humiliating glimpse.

"Scottie," I say. "Take that out."

"It must be fun to have girls," Mrs. Speer says.

She looks at the ocean, and I see that she's looking at Alex sunbathing on the floating raft. Sid leans over Alex and puts his mouth to hers. She raises a hand to his head, and for a moment I forget it's my daughter out there and think of how long it has been since I've been kissed or kissed like that.

"Or maybe you have your hands full," Mrs. Speer says.

"No, no," I say. "It's great," and it is, I suppose, though I feel like I've just acquired them and don't know yet. "They've been together for ages." I gesture to Alex and Sid. I don't understand if they're a couple or if this is how all kids in high school act these days.

Mrs. Speer looks at me curiously, as if she's about to say something, but she doesn't.

"And boys." I gesture to her little dorks. "They must keep you busy."

"They're a ha ~ Kaui Hart Hemmings

I, for one, struggle a little bit with a $250,000 education for a philosophy degree. They are a wonderful people, but we can't employ philosophers in manufacturing in the United States. We need a one- or two-year technical add-on for a high school. ~ Douglas R. Oberhelman

Before I was ever in high school, I had dark circles under my eyes. ~ Benicio Del Toro

And that's why I've been talking only about you and the tension within you, because you are - not in a clichéd sense, but in a weirdly literal sense - the future. After you walk up here and walk back down, you're going to be the present. You will be the broken world and the act of changing it, in a way that you haven't been before. You will be so many things, and the one thing that I wish I'd known and want to say is, don't just be yourself. Be all of yourselves. Don't just live. Be that other thing connected to death. Be life. Live all of your life. Understand it, see it, appreciate it. And have fun. ~ Joss Whedon

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

You can imagine anything to be fun in retrospect- look at all those people who long for high school. ~ Jennifer Close

I'd known since girlhood that I wanted to be a book editor. By high school, I'd pore over the acknowledgments section of novels I loved, daydreaming that someday a brilliant talent might see me as the person who 'made her book possible' or 'enhanced every page with editorial wisdom and insight.' Could I be the Maxwell Perkins to some future Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Wolfe? ~ Bridie Clark

In high school, I got smacked and kicked around. Two bloody noses. It was horrible. ~ Steven Spielberg

Today in America, we are trying to prepare students for a high tech world of constant change, but we are doing so by putting them through a school system designed in the early 20th Century that has not seen substantial change in 30 years. ~ Janet Napolitano

I barely got out of high school, and I look back at my life often and go, 'Wow, this was awesome!' ~ Jamie Lee Curtis

Anorak" was a nickname Halliday had been given by a female British exchange student at his high school. ~ Ernest Cline

Teenage girls, please don't worry about being super popular in high school, or being the best actress in high school, or the best athlete. Not only do people not care about any of that the second you graduate, but when you get older, if you reference your successes in high school too much, it actually makes you look kind of pitiful, like some babbling old Tennessee Williams character with nothing else going on in her current life. What I've noticed is that almost no one who was a big star in high school is also big star later in life. For us overlooked kids, it's so wonderfully fair. ~ Mindy Kaling

The guys in high school were like, "You've got a nice voice; you should keep singing," but I never honestly thought that one day I'd be a singer. When you're young, you don't see the signs. ~ Victoria Legrand

You're imprinted in high school more than any other point in your life. ~ Bud Grant

In high school, I read 'Silas Marner' and I was very attracted to this character - he was very rundown and he'd just stop, and things would happen around him. ~ Gus Van Sant

I just downloaded '1984' for my iPod, but I've read that before. It just hearkens back to the 'romance' of my high-school days. I really liked the space I was in when I was reading it. ~ Lupe Fiasco

As I stomped across the school grounds, all I could see was Cal sitting with my dad in some manly room with leather chairs and dead animals on the wall, chomping on cigars as my dad formally signed me away to him. They probably even high-fived. ~ Rachel Hawkins

From the moment I bought my ticket, I had a premonition I wasn't returning to New York anytime soon.
You Know, this happens a lot to Russians. The Soviet Union is gone, and the borders are as free and passable as they've ever been. And yet, when a Russian moves between the two universes, this feeling of finality persists, the logical impossibility of a place like Russia existing alongside the civilized world, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, sharing the same atmosphere with, say, Vladivostok. It was like those mathematical concepts I could never understand in high school: if, then. If Russia exists, then the West is a mirage; conversely, if Russia does not exist, then and only then is the West real and tangible. No wonder young people talk about "going beyond the cordon" when they talk of emigrating, as if Russia were ringed by a vast cordon sanitaire. Either you stay in the leper colony or you get out into the wider world and maybe try to spread your disease to others. ~ Gary Shteyngart

All of my high school issues are resolved! ~ Oscar Isaac

...[I]t doesn't take an advanced degree to figure out that this education talk is less a strategy for mitigating inequality than it is a way of rationalizing it. To attribute economic results to school years finished and SAT scores achieved is to remove matters from the realm of, well, economics and to relocate them to the provinces of personal striving and individual intelligence. From this perspective, wages aren't what they are because one party (management) has a certain amount of power over the other (workers); wages are like that because the god of the market, being surpassingly fair, rewards those who show talent and gumption. Good people are those who get a gold star from their teacher in elementary school, a fat acceptance letter from a good college, and a good life when they graduate. All because they are the best. Those who don't pay attention in high school get to spend their days picking up discarded cans by the side of the road. Both outcomes are our own doing. ~ Thomas Frank

A customs man at JFK had asked them to open the suitcases (in case they were smuggling in Indian fruits or sweets, perhaps). 'Ulysses!' the large bespectacled disbelieving customs man had said. 'Are you a student?' Ananda had nodded, though he was in the equivalent of high school. 'I wouldn't read Ulysses unless I was a student!' said the customs man, shutting the suitcase after his glimpse into the tantalising freemasonry of studenthood. A potentially incendiary book then - on the verge of being, but not quite, contraband. And near-unreadable. Ananda ~ Amit Chaudhuri

All those prayers said back in high school, the teenager I was having sex without protection, my period late, tears taking the place of breath, moments of high drama, saying, Please God Please God let me not be pregnant let my period come so I can finish high school oh please just this once and I will start showing up on time and doing my homework if you just this once have mercy God O God take pity and let my period come. Sitting on the edge of my bed, crying into my hands, so certain of my ability to bear children that everything in me played with it like fire, then prayed for its prevention. It's possible that I repeated it once too often, my anti-pregnancy chant, and the words seeped into the fabric of my body, making it into a shield. ~ Sonja Livingston

The movies that I did in the '80s were either good or bad, but I never was oppressed with any feeling - I mean, I thought it was ridiculous to play high school or college students when I was 30. But at the same time, that was really done then. ~ Curtis Armstrong

I began thinking I would do musical theater because in high school that was really the only sort of curriculum they had as far as getting onstage and doing anything that anybody would see. So that's what I did. ~ Gretchen Mol

Football really was my salvation in high school. For some kids it's art. For some it's music. For me, it was strapping on those pads, yanking that helmet over my head, and getting out there with the team. ~ Rudy Ruettiger

I finished high school, moved to Nashville for college, and set out to break into the music business. Every night when I called home with news of my experiences, my mom and dad would encourage me to keep taking those small steps. ~ Trisha Yearwood

I don't know what kind of sexual crisis you're having right now, like, four years after it would have been useful, but, well. I'm not saying what we did in high school makes you gay or bi or whatever, but I can tell you I'm gay, and that even though I acted like what we were doing wasn't gay back then, it super was." He sighs. "Does that help, Alex? My Bloody Mary is here, and I need it to talk about this phone call. ~ Casey McQuiston

I began to write poetry in high school, and would ride miles over sandy roads in the fine hills around Cedar Rapids, repeating the lines over and over until I had them right, making some of the rhythm of the horse help. ~ Paul Engle

I would go to parties and say I was an editor, and people, especially women – and that was important to me back then – would say, "Oh, really?" and raise their eyebrows and look at me a little more carefully. I remember the first party I went to after I became a teacher, someone asked me what I did for a living, and I said, "Well, I teach high school." He looked over my shoulder, nodded his head, said, "I went to high school," and walked away.

Once I repeated this anecdote around a big table full of Mexican food in the garden at a place called La Choza in Chicago, and Becky Mueller, another teacher at the school, said that I was a "storyteller." I liked that. I was looking for something to be other than "just" a teacher, and "storyteller" felt about right. I am a teacher and a storyteller in that order. I have made my living and my real contribution to my community as a teacher, and I have been very lucky to have found that calling, but all through the years I have entertained myself and occasionally other people by telling stories. ~ Peter Ferry

If you skip one class, everyone knows about it. The teacher will track you down, or one of the guidance counselors will track you down and ask if you're smoking pot. According to the geniuses running this place, the only reason you would skip class is if you're smoking pot, though I actually find my classes more enjoyable when I'm high. ~ Flynn Meaney

As a senior in high school, you figure out what you want to do with your life. I asked myself if I wanted to get back into acting and thought: 'Yes, but under my own terms and nothing like it was before.' ~ Macaulay Culkin

I've been a fan of Jack Vance since before I was in high school. ~ Ann Leckie

I worked my butt off in high school and received a lot of scholarships for college and to throw all that away for acting was tough for my family, but it was just something I felt my heart pulling me towards and don't regret a single minute of it. I love to act! ~ Kellan Lutz

How come you got to start making the bed the minute your feet hit the floor? You need to lighten up, girl. Live a little!' Then she'd laugh, delighted with herself and at my inability to be angry with her. ~ Lorene Cary

I went to Samuel Ayer High School, which is now Milpitas High School. ~ Grant Show

I think my first experience of art, or the joy in making art, was playing the horn at some high-school dance or bar mitzvah or wedding, looking at a roomful of people moving their bodies around in time to what I was doing. There was a piano player, a bass player, a drummer, and my breath making the melody. ~ Robert Pinsky

You can't walk me to school," Tommy said. He came into the kitchen, sat down before his plate, and stared at it, waiting for Sammy to pile it with eggs. "Mom, you can't possibly. I would die. I would absolutely die."

"He would die," Sammy told Rosa.

"Which would be very embarrassing for me," Rosa said. "Standing there next to a dead body in front of William Floyd Junior High. ~ Michael Chabon

The surprising thing is that I was not funny in high school. I was always jealous of the funny kids because they always got the girls. I couldn't tell a joke to save my life. ~ Seann William Scott

Sixty-five percent of Americans don't have the conversation with their children. So you're sending off boys and girls off to college, off to high school, off to wherever they go, and nobody's had the conversation about how to conduct themselves. About a man telling his son how to be a man. How to respect a woman. How do you respect yourself? ~ Mariska Hargitay