College Student Quotes & Sayings

I'm gonna take all my sadness, frustration, anger and energy and channel it into becoming the best possible student.

I am going to become a learning machine...

Go ahead, go to all your parties. Go ahead and go home to your families and friends every weekend. You are probably smarter than me. But it doesn't matter. While you are goofing around, I'm gonna be studying, and I'm gonna catch you. — Peter Rogers

I look forward all day to evening, and then I put an "engaged" on the door and get into my nice red bath robe and furry slippers and pile all the cushions behind me on the couch, and light the brass student lamp at my elbow, and read and read and read. One book isn't enough. I have four going at once. Just now, they're Tennyson's poems and "Vanity Fair" and Kipling's "Plain Tales" and - don't laugh - "Little Women." I find that I am the only girl in college who wasn't brought up on "Little Women." I haven't told anybody though (that would stamp me as queer). I just quietly went and bought it with $1.12 of my last month's allowance; and the next time somebody mentions pickled limes, I'll know what she is talking about! — Jean Webster

More than ever, a college diploma unlocks economic opportunity, provides students with a wealth of new skills and knowledge, and encourages innovation and growth. But more than ever, it also comes with a mountain of student loan debt. — Mark Pocan

Despite all the challenges facing higher education in America, from mounting student debt to grade inflation and erratic standards, our system is rightly the world's envy, and not just because our most revered universities remain on the cutting edge of research and attract talent from around the globe. We also have a plenitude and variety of settings for learning that are unrivaled. In light of that, the process of applying to college should and could be about ecstatically rummaging through those possibilities and feeling energized, even elated, by them. But for too many students, it's not, and financial constraints aren't the only reason. Failures of boldness and imagination by both students and parents bear some blame. The information is all out there. You just have to look. — Frank Bruni

A third of our kids, after we spend more per student than any country in the world other than a couple rounding errors, 30 percent are college- and/or career-ready. — Jeb Bush

My own view is that the general education curriculum that a college picks has to be appropriate for the kind of student body that it has. — Louis Menand

This is the generation that thinks of itself as global citizens but knows little about the world and acts locally. It is the most diverse generation in collegiate history with the strongest relationships between races but they have limited interest in talking about race or reaching across political or generational divides. — Arthur Levine

I wasn't a good student in high school. I wanted to go to college, but they weren't exactly beating down my door to offer me admission, and it's so expensive in the U.S. If you join up for a period, the army will pay your school and provide a stipend. — Kevin Powers

And speaking of options ,these kids [the ones who attend elite universities] have all been told that theirs are limitless. Once you commit to something, though, that ceases to be true. A former student sent me an essay he wrote, a few years after college, called "The Paradox of Potential." Yale students, he said, are like stem cells. They can be anything in the world, so they try to delay for as long as possible the moment when they have to become just one thing in particular. Possibility, paradoxically, becomes limitation. — William Deresiewicz

When I was young, I went to college, had a teacher who was, had been a student of Trilling's at Columbia, this was in California. And he, I started reading him around that time, and then I went to Columbia as well, Trilling was still teaching there, I took a course with him. He was not a great teacher, but he was, when I was younger, he was a good model for the kind of criticism I wanted to do, because he thought very dialectically. — Louis Menand

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974, which was designed to ensure privacy and properly regulated access to student records, has become "the shield behind which higher education hides the academic corruption in college athletics. — Jay M Smith

When I was younger, I was in love with everything about the British Isles, from British folklore to Celtic music. That was always where my passions were as a young girl, and so I studied folklore as a college student in England and Ireland. — Terri Windling

The college bookstore was a splash of life, culture, and society. As a psychology student, I often found myself intrigued by the behavior, ways of thinking and feeling, and general schemata of others, and this was the perfect spot to engage my senses.
Other times, I was just annoyed. — Gina Marinello-Sweeney

As a matter of fact student riots of one sort or another, protests against the order that is, kicks against college and university management indicate a healthy growth and a normal functioning of the academic mind. — William Allen White

Had a broad education. He'd been to the School of My Dad Always Said, the College of It Stands to Reason, and was now a postgraduate student at the University of What Some Bloke In the Pub Told Me. — Terry Pratchett

The boy, called Urbain, is now fourteen years old and wonderfully clever. He deserves to be given the best of educations, and in the neighborhood of Saintes the best education available is to be had at the Jesuit College of Bordeaux. This celebrated seat of learning comprised a high school for boys, a liberal arts college, a seminary, and a School of Advanced Studies for ordained postgraduates. Here the precociously brilliant Urbain Grandier spent more than ten years, first as schoolboy, and later as undergraduate, theological student and, after his ordination in 1615, as Jesuit novice. Not that he intended to enter the Company; for he felt no vocation to subject himself to so rigid a discipline. No, his career was to be made, not in a religious order, but as a secular priest. — Aldous Huxley

There are three types of student: The golden student pays and loans, the silver student pays but does not learn, the bronze student learns but does not pay. — J.C. McKeown

All college students are being asked to sign an official statement to the effect that they "sympathize with the Germans and approve of the New Order." Eighty percent have decided to obey the dictates of their conscience, but the penalty will be severe. Any student refusing to sign will be sent to a German labor camp. What's to become of the youth of our country if they've all got to do hard labor in Germany? — Anne Frank

Pell grants are the foundation of Federal student aid. As someone who attended college with the help of Pell grants and as chairman of the Pell Grant Caucus, I know how important they are for our Nation's low-income students. — Ric Keller

Foch never for a moment thought about the easy ways of bringing his name before the public and the political world, or even about acquiring a reputation for military insight among the chiefs of the French army. He never posed as a central figure at public functions; he was never interviewed by the press; he made no use of the professional reviews to bring his name before military readers. Ile never published a line until his chiefs suggested the publication of his lectures at the Staff College. From the day when he received his first commission he was a hard-working student of war, patiently preparing himself to do his duty when the opportunity came, and meanwhile content to put all his energies into the work assigned to him. Success in the career of arms is not always associated with high personal character or with this modest pursuit of duty for its own sake. — Andrew Hilliard Atteridge

As a child, I had no idea that I would end up in the film industry. My ambitions changed from wanting to join the army like my grandfather to taking up merchant navy as a career to running for India, and finally, investment banking while I was a student of economics honour. But during my college days, I began to get offers for modelling. — Arjun Rampal

One of the biggest reasons I like coaching college ball is the kids. I feel I can impact players' lives. I like the fact that they're student-athletes. I like to see those kids graduate. — Rick Majerus

Noises and smells, those can bring back powerful memories. I remember when I was going to school one Fourth of July, and there were a lot of fireworks going off. I knew that I was in Richmond. I knew that I was a college student. But I thought people were shooting at me. — Kevin Powers

In college, I was an editor on the student daily ... To the extent that I noticed the existence of crew at all, I saw only what appeared to be big-boned acolytes who rose at dawn. — Barry S. Strauss

Colleges and universities, meanwhile, have no such qualms about torturing their applicants. Think about how much work a high-school student must do to even be considered for a spot at a decent college. The difference in college and job applications is especially striking when you consider that a job applicant will be getting paid upon acceptance while a college applicant will be paying for the privilege to attend. — Steven D. Levitt

One of the ironies of college is that the impossibility of reading your way out of the modern predicament is something you learn about, as a student, by reading. Part of the value of a humanistic education has to do with a consciousness of, and a familiarity with, the limits that you'll spend the rest of your life talking about and pushing against. — Joshua Rothman

I dropped out of high school and I tried to go to community college for a little while. I can't be a student. I always hated that lifestyle. — Zach Condon

He who comes from the kitchen, smells of its smoke; and he who adheres to a sect, has something of its cant; the college air pursues the student; and dry inhumanity him who herds with literary pedants. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

From kindergarten to college, certain teachers engaged my curiosity and motivated me to learn. While I was not the best student, their efforts left a lasting impact. — George Lucas

I was a beast in college. I worked hard and I played hard. I was relentless learning about business. I actually snuck into MBA classes my freshman and sophomore years. I wanted to challenge myself to see how I compared to the smartest kids at Indiana University so I was 18 and pretended I was an MBA student. — Mark Cuban

If you do not share the universities' values, it could be a big mistake to send your children to college before they are intellectually and morally prepared for the indoctrination-rather-than-education they will receive there. Therefore, prepare them morally and intellectually and, if possible, do not send them to college right after high school. Let them work for a year, or perhaps travel (for example, given the antipathy to Israel on campuses, a trip to Israel would be both morally clarifying and maturing). The younger the student, the less life experience and maturity they have, the more they are likely to embrace the rejection of your values. — Dennis Prager

Graduate study is an intensive education. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I was pretty anti-academic, and I wasn't much of a student. I had a really short attention span and did not get a lot out of high school academically. I think college was a little the same way. — Chris Crutcher

Today's college student is lazy and uninformed — Hillary Clinton

I didn't do improv in college, I never performed, I didn't do theater either. I was in student government, I was a history major. — Demetri Martin

The student now goes to college to proclaim rather than to learn. A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals. — Spiro T. Agnew

Jefferson was the rare student who came to college already knowing that there could be joy in studying. — John Ferling

I came into the Republican party in 1980, when I was a college student at Georgetown. — Luis Fortuno

We inherited a strong and flourishing country, and instead of making the investments - that is, the sacrifices - to maintain it, we chose to suck it dry and stick our children with the bill. If you want to see who is to blame for student debt, just look in the mirror. And if parents find themselves supporting kids beyond their college years, that is only, in the aggregate, a form of compensatory justice: the intergenerational transfer of wealth that should have been effected through taxation. — William Deresiewicz

I studied English Literature. I wasn't a very good student, but one thing I did get from it, while I was making films at the same time with the college film society, was that I started thinking about the narrative freedoms that authors had enjoyed for centuries and it seemed to me that filmmakers should enjoy those freedoms as well. — Christopher Nolan

I was always a good student, but I didn't read that much until I was 18 and I was working my way through college. — James Patterson

The ideal college is Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other. — James A. Garfield

My life has had a lot of fits and starts: before I studied literature at all I was a musician, and began undergrad as a conservatory student. I started studying literature in my third year of college, when I took a poetry course with James Longenbach that was pretty extraordinary. It changed my life. — Garth Greenwell

For the mind and the imagination, bookstores aren't enough, college courses aren't enough, the Internet isn't enough. Those resources are all governed by the tastes and needs of the moment. Only libraries take the long view, quietly shelving the unused with the used, knowing that one of these days the two categories will be reversed by a student's discovery of those hitherto undisturbed volumes whose contents will unsettle the learned world. — Helen Vendler

Had a girl in this class," Corcoran said. "She was a horrible math student in fifth grade. She cried every Saturday when we did remedial stuff. Huge tears and tears." At the memory, Corcoran got a little emotional himself. He looked down. "She just e-mailed us a couple weeks ago. She's in college now. She's an accounting major. — Malcolm Gladwell

At Reed College, I learned very quickly that I didn't know nearly enough. I learned, first, that every student there was as smart as I was, and quite a few seemed smarter. — John Daniel

The vast majority of students probably emerge from college with an adequate grasp of no more than a single method of inquiry. Even this capacity may erode over time if it does not relate to experiences and problems that recur in the student's later life. — Derek Bok

I was a good student until I turned 15. Then, all of a sudden, it didn't matter to me anymore. Isn't that funny. I don't want to go to college. I always knew that. But it's hard. My friends are going, and I feel a little left behind. — Clara Mamet

We lead the world in only 3 categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined, 25 of whom are allies. Now none of this is the fault of 20 year old college student, but you nonetheless are without a doubt a member of the worst period generation period ever period, so when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the world I don't know what the f^&k you're talking about. — Aaron Sorkin

And I do not want, and I will not accept, a deal in which I am asked to do nothing, in fact, I'm able to keep hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional income that I don't need, while a parent out there who is struggling to figure out how to send their kid to college suddenly finds that they've got a couple thousand dollars less in grants or student loans. — Barack Obama

I don't have many expenses as a college student (mostly food) so I'm able to put advertising revenue right back into the production of new videos. — Marques Brownlee

You know what I was thinking? [Ruthie] got so excited when she was spouting this ahistorical countertextual nonsense, and I caught myself thinking, 'What an idiot her teacher must be,' and thinking about her teacher made me realize - the kind of excitement she was showing as she mindlessly spouted back the nonsense she learned in college, that's just like the excitement some of my own students show. And it occurred to me that what we professors think of as a 'brilliant student' is nothing but a student who is enthusiastically converted to whatever idiotic ideas we've been teaching them."
"Self-knowledge is a painful thing," said Esther. "To learn that your best students are parrots after all. — Orson Scott Card

When I'm moving down Broadway to meet Jean, my secretary, for brunch, in front of Tower Records a college student with a clipboard asks me to name the saddest song I know. I tell him, without pausing, "You Can't Always Get What You Want" by the Beatles. — Anonymous

Dartmouth College employs computer learning techniques in a very broad array of courses. For example, a student can gain a deep insight into the statistics of Mendelian genetics in an hour with the computer rather than spend a year crossing fruit flies
in the laboratory. — Carl Sagan

Collegiate life presents a student with innumerable opportunities to engender personal growth by responding to a dynamic social, athletic, and academic environment. Students instigate personal development by making calculated and rash personal decisions pertaining to what activities to pursue and by measuring their string of reactions to new experiences. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Ten bucks says the virgin dies before the slut," I said, taking a sip of my soda.
"You're on. Oh, hey, don't go in the shower, for God's sake," Nick advised the scantily dressed college student on the screen as she tiptoed into the bathroom. He stuffed a fistful of popcorn into his mouth. "Well, okay, there you go," he added as she was slashed to death by Freddy's fingernails. "Can't say I didn't warn you. Your poor parents. — Kristan Higgins

Dale's face is older. Just a little. Around the eyes and mouth. The skin of his neck. The back of his hands. Maybe not, he thinks, turning on the faucet, letting the water grow warm then hot.
He begins shaving his lubricated chin and cheeks. Chrysalis hibernation slows things down, but it doesn't stop them, not all together, and he finds himself to currently resemble something between a derelict and a college student, neither one ringing particularly desirable in his present mood. — David Edward Wagner

Instead, California is one of only 10 states that provides in-state college and university tuition to illegal immigrants. That's grossly unfair to a legal high school student who moves out of California for a year, then returns to attend college. — Elton Gallegly

The authorities should have taken a different approach. Imagine if it had been the far-right British National Party (BNP) growing on campus. Suppose that it was racism, instead of Islamism, spreading throughout the student population and the BNP had decided to stand in Student Union elections. If that had happened, and the BNP had taken over, the college would have acted immediately. They certainly would have seen the need for a solution, if only for their own reputation and the impact on admissions. They would have cited the college constitution about how hate speech was not allowed, how the BNP was an external political group attempting to hijack the college, and probably stopped them. But because of the religious element in our message, and the desire of the authorities not to offend our religious sensitivities, we were left alone. — Maajid Nawaz

The whole student loan thing drives me completely nuts. If it wasn't possible for 18-year-olds to sign themselves up for tens of thousands of dollars in debt in order to pay their college bills, the state governments wouldn't have found it so politically easy to cut taxpayer support for public colleges and universities. — Gail Collins

I wanted to double-check with you that your mailing address is still the same as the one you sent us back in April? If you're a college student I know address changes are really common at this time of year! — Marilynne Robinson

We have some concerns if student financial aid is not keeping pace, and college costs continue to outstrip inflation. — Mary Johnson

I don't understand why Universities only offer undergraduate classes during the day when their professional staff should be smart enough to know that a large percentage of their students are non-traditional. — Heather Chapple

Did he talk about silos?"
"Of course he did," I said. "We have to break down the silos that separate the academic side of the house from the Student Retention Office, apparently."
Emma wrinkled her nose. "Why is it a good thing to break silos? All that happens when you break a silo is that the grain spills out. Or the missile falls over. — Frankie Bow

Dartmouth is such a special college with its rich history, dedicated student body, and, as I've been learning more recently, colorful customs. — Wendy Kopp

I didn't make any kind of grades in high school. My mother was a single mom, putting my three sisters through college, and I was such a bad student that I knew I had no right to take her money. But I loved being in classes and learning. I took in a huge amount of what I learned, but I had a feeling of always being behind and being in trouble. — Louis C.K.

I'm just a really messed-up person. I don't know how to handle life like every other normal college student out there, I sighed. — Kimberly Lauren

Texas is reportedly going to give college students the right to carry guns on campus. So I guess that next semester, every college student in Texas is getting straight A's. — Conan O'Brien

I was a completely below-average high school student. I never went to college. — Grant Achatz

Meeting your best friends in college was dangerous, if only because college was the great leveler. Everyone in college lives like a college student. Nobody necessarily knows who's on financial aid and who's not and how much. Nobody would ever ask such things. The stratifications are hidden so well as to be forgotten. — Jessica Winter

One reason I like to highlight reading is, reading is the beginnings of the ability to be a good student. And if you cant read, its going to be hard to realize dreams; its going to be hard to go to college. So when your teachers say, read-you ought to listen to her. — George W. Bush

The last state to admit a black student to the college level was South Carolina. — Constance Baker Motley

I got into the Shanghai Drama Institute because my parents, like all parents, want their children to have good grades and to go to a good college. I became a college student because of them. — Li Bingbing

Americans in particular are myopic. They're not traveling as much. When you were a college student, the next thing you would do on graduation was to take a year off and travel. That's what I did. I went to Indonesia. — Julie Taymor

My father is a college professor and that's about the extent of my college experience. I'm sort of a professional student forever. I think just as human beings we always have a student who is alive in us and is waiting to pop up and make us feel like we are 16 years-old again. — Gabriel Mann

A first-rate college library with a comfortable campus around it is a fine milieu for a writer. There is, of course, the problem of educating the young. I remember how once, between terms, not at Cornell, a student brought a transistor set with him into the reading room. He managed to state that one, he was playing "classical" music; that two, he was doing it "softly"; and that three, "there were not many readers around in summer." I was there, a one-man multitude. — Vladimir Nabokov

I can remember as a college student writing stories and novels, some of which ended up getting published and some that didn't. It was like my head was going to burst - there were so many things I wanted to write all at once. I had so many ideas, jammed up. It was like they just needed permission to come out. — Stephen King

The Black Panthers was what we would call today a criminal gang that was formed by Huey Newton. Now, interestingly enough, I knew Huey Newton before he formed the Black Panthers. He was a student of mine when I was a teacher, instructor at Oakland City College back in the very early 1960s. — Edwin Meese

The Bungalow 4 counselor was a twenty-year-old college student named Eric who had terrible acne and wrote poems about the local girls who worked in the kitchen and how their breasts looked lonely but also beautiful, like melted ice cream. — Kelly Link

From elementary school through high school, my siblings and I were hectored to excel in every class, to win medals in science fairs, to be chosen princess of the prom, to win election to student government. Thereby and only thereby, we learned, could we expect to gain admission to the right college, which in turn would get us into Harvard Medical School: life's one sure path to meaningful success and lasting happiness. — Jon Krakauer

I went to Oberlin College, and they don't have a film major, but they do have what's called an individual major, where you can sort of pitch to a committee your own course study, and if they approve it, you have essentially just designed your own major. So Oberlin doesn't have a film major; they do have a film minor.And then my spring semester of my junior year, I went off to NYU film school as a visiting student - they have a program for kids from other schools to come in for a semester. — Ed Helms

I don't think I've ever referred to any girl I dated as my girlfriend. I think that would freak me out. Even the girl that I dated for two years in college I don't think I ever referred to her as my girlfriend."
"How would you introduce her?" I asked.
"I'm just going to say her name," he said. — Daniel Amory

Texas is a national leader in education reform and student achievement. Through our college- and career-ready standards and assessments, strong school accountability, and a focus on educator development, we have created an education system that prepares our students for success after graduation. — Rick Perry

What I tell student athletes is first of all, you've made good choices this far in order to be able to be in college and to be an athlete. Keep making good choices. — Condoleezza Rice

You know you're in a college town when there's a restaurant called "Pancakea." The establishment was a pancake/coffee house, and Choo, Molly, Sig, and I were sitting in a booth arguing about the place and its name and their relative merits. I thought the name was a take on panacea, implying that pancakes are a cure for everything. Sig thought the owner wanted the place to become the IKEA of pancakes. Molly thought that given how large the pancakes were, the title might be a riff on Pangea, the first continental landmass. We all agreed that the owner was probably an ex-college student who couldn't get a job with his or her major, but we couldn't agree on whether that major was philosophy, marketing, anthropology, or just heavy drinking. — Elliott James

A white college student from a private college goes into a poor neighborhood and volunteers four hours a week and that's considered exemplary. [Whereas] a poor kid who lives in that community and takes care of all the kids in that neighborhood four hours every day is not seen as a volunteer. — Patricia Hill Collins

If there were no government-guaranteed student loans, college tuition would be much lower. — Gary Johnson

I wrote this script in 2003, when I was a humble college student, sitting in my boxers and writing in my dorm room. And I came up with the idea of writing an action-based 'Snow White,' with this kind of Huntsman character as kind of a way in. So, that's something I'm sort of proud of. — Evan Daugherty

I think traveling made me who I am. When I was 16, I was an exchange student in England, and that was the year that I kind of feel like I was on the road going one direction in life, and it just kind of shifted me over, and I finished high school, and I went traveling for three more years instead of going to college. — Gayle Forman

On education, in order to ensure that America remains a world leader, we must create an educated, skilled workforce in the vital areas of science, math, engineering and information technology. At the same time, we must give every student access to a college degree. — John F. Tierney

Most of the debates I've participated in have been on Christian college campuses or on secular campuses; so, largely before a student audience. — Dinesh D'Souza

Modern barber college, Smith eyes closed suffers a haircut fearing its ugliness 50 cents, a barber student olive-skinned 'Garcia' on his coat, two blond small boys one with feared face and big ears watching from seats, tell him 'You're ugly little boy & you've got big ears' he'd weep and suffer and it wouldn't even be true, the other thinfaced conscious concentrated patched bluejeans and scuffed shoes who watches me delicate, suffering child that grows hard and greedy with puberty. — Jack Kerouac

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

Student loan debt is the reason I don't advise students who want to become entrepreneurs to apply to elite, expensive colleges. They can be as successful if they go to a relatively inexpensive public college. — Vivek Wadhwa

There are few sources of energy so powerful as a procrastinating college student. — Paul Graham

If [a student's] college's endowment portfolio has fossil-fuel stock, then their educations are being subsidized by investments that guarantee they won't have much of a planet on which to make use of their degree. — Bill McKibben

When I was a college student at Yale, I was studying physics and mathematics and was absolutely intent on becoming a theoretical physicist. — James Rothman

Yeah. No matter what Coach does or doesn't do. Because ... I'm going on my terms. Even if by some miracle he recommends me for the scholarship, I'm not taking it."
That surprises her. "I don't get it."
"That's why I had no choice but to let that pitch go by. I had to prove to myself that I could live without baseball. I can't go to college on their terms. I can't be the ballplayer first and the student second, and if they're giving me an athletic scholarship, believe me - that's what it would be. Athlete-scholar, not the other way around. No one can convince me otherwise.
"So, yeah. I'll have to take out student loans. I'll have to work my ass off. But that's OK. — Barry Lyga

When I was in school, I was very much into just sports, mostly basketball, and didn't really see myself as much of a student. But once I got into college, I figured I wasn't going to be play beyond college. I started to think what was I going to do, since I wouldn't be able to make a living with basketball. There were a couple of things I liked to do. I wrote poetry, spoken word mostly. — Matt De La Pena

America is the student who defies the odds to become the first in a family to go to college - the citizen who defies the cynics and goes out there and votes - the young person who comes out of the shadows to demand the right to dream. That's what America is about. — Barack Obama