High School Graduate Quotes & Sayings

I love working with women. I think they're beautiful. I like to photograph them. I like the way they interact. When I was in high school I used to hang out with the girls. When I went to graduate school, I was in an all girls school. So it's something I'm very familiar with and quite fascinated by. — Brian De Palma

While a student in McCollum's class, Jobs became friends with a graduate who was the teacher's all-time favorite and a school legend for his wizardry in the class. Stephen Wozniak, whose younger brother had been on a swim team with Jobs, was almost five years older than Jobs and far more knowledgeable about electronics. But emotionally and socially he was still a high school geek. — Walter Isaacson

There is a mathematical underpinning that you must first acquire, mastery of each mathematical subdiscipline leading you to the threshold of the next. In turn you must learn arithmetic, Euclidian geometry, high school algebra, differential and integral calculus, ordinary and partial differential equations, vector calculus, certain special functions of mathematical physics, matrix algebra, and group theory. For most physics students, this might occupy them from, say, third grade to early graduate school - roughly 15 years. Such a course of study does not actually involve learning any quantum mechanics, but merely establishing the mathematical framework required to approach it deeply. — Carl Sagan

Imagine if baseball were taught the way science is taught in most inner-city schools. Schoolchildren would get lectures about the history of the World Series. High school students would occasionally reproduce famous plays of the past. Nobody would get in the game themselves until graduate school. — Alison Gopnik

Encouragement from my high school teacher Patty Hart said 'you need to focus and theater might be your route out of here.' I created the program, went to college and graduate school and now here I am. — Jeffrey Donovan

Don't you kids get any ideas about dragging a trailer into the backyard. after you graduate from high school, i don't want to see you again. — Alison Bechdel

Your dynamic with everyone will change when you graduate high school. High school is a pit of despair. It's a swirling tornado of insecurities and there's really nothing good about it. — Kristen Bell

One out of every four. I have repeated this statistic over and over and still cannot fathom the depth of what it really means. One out of every four girls is sexually abused before the age of eighteen. For boys, the number is one out of six.9 This means one out of every four women at the grocery store, at the bank, at the mall, in the pew at church, and everywhere in "normal" life have had this traumatic experience. For me as a teacher, this means that one out of every four of my precious eighth grade girls will, before they graduate from high school, become one of those victims. — Mary Frances Bowley

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

It's very interesting, if you look at a study that was done by the Brookings Institute back in 2009, they determined that if Americans do three things, they can avoid poverty. Three things. Work, graduate from high school, and get married before you have children. — Rick Santorum

My father came from a country called Bolivia. He was of Spanish descent. I never went to Bolivia until I was 60 years old, but apparently when he was 17, he had already planned his entire academic curriculum so that he could graduate high school and enter college in the United States. That's how much he wanted to come to this country. — Raquel Welch

Animation wasn't my love, but drawing was. I loved drawing, and when it came time to graduate from high school, I looked around and it was like, "Wow, I don't really want to study math. I don't really want to study science. I don't really want to study literature. Is there a place where I can go and draw cartoons?" — Harland Williams

The most important steps that I followed were studying math and science in school. I was always interested in physics and astronomy and chemistry and I continued to study those subjects through high school and college on into graduate school. That's what prepared me for being an astronaut; it actually gave me the qualifications to be selected to be an astronaut. — Sally Ride

Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, untaught
In schools, some graduate of the field or street,
Who shall become a master of art,
An admiral sailing the high seas of thought
Fearless and first, and steering with his fleet
For lands not yet laid down in any chart. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I want my kids to graduate from high school. But that's not enough. I also want them to go to college. Why? Because rich people's kids go to college. And if that's good enough for them, it's good enough for my kids. Because you know what? College graduates don't tend to go to jail as frequently as nongraduates. — Geoffrey Canada

If American schooling is inadequate now, just imagine how much more obsolete it will be when today's kindergarten students graduate from high school in just 12 years. — Janet Napolitano

To be very honest, I never thought I would graduate from high school. I got very lucky to get into an alternative high school, which really saved my butt. — Langhorne Slim

These movies are like my kids. I just love them to death. Some of them go to Harvard and some of them can barely graduate high school. — Barry Sonnenfeld

When nearly a third of our high school students do not graduate on time with their peers, we have work to do. We must design our middle and high schools so that no student gets lost in the crowd and disconnected from his or her own potential. — Christine Gregoire

I entered Harvard in 1965 not really knowing what I wanted to do. This confusion seems to have lost me a fellowship. G. D. Searle and Company, the pharmaceutical firm, had their home office in Skokie, and they gave a fellowship each year to a graduate from my high school that was going to major in science in college. — Martin Chalfie

I'm visiting my high school. Every half year I do the exams, and then this year I'm going to graduate. — Daniela Hantuchova

...[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

In 2005, a man diagnosed with multiple myeloma asked me if he would be alive to watch his daughter graduate from high school in a few months. In 2009, bound to a wheelchair, he watched his daughter graduate from college. The wheelchair had nothing to do with his cancer. The man had fallen down while coaching his youngest son's baseball team. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

Most students graduate from high school knowing nine words about the civil rights movement: Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and "I Have a Dream." And that's it! — Andrew Aydin

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

And this year, when we end the cruel, defeatist practice of passing children who cannot read into fourth grade, and when our most diligent students begin to graduate from high school in 11 years, and get a head start on college costs with the dollars they earned through their hard work, others will take notice of Indiana yet again. — Mitch McConnell

By 2018, an estimated 63 percent of all new U.S. jobs will require workers with an education beyond high school. For our young people to get those jobs, they first need to graduate from high school ready to start a postsecondary education. — Bill Gates

Active scholars are uniquely attracted by a high-quality graduate school of arts and sciences. Faculty members consider the teaching and training of new generations of graduate students as their highest calling. They believe that working with graduate students maintains and develops their professional skills more effectively than any other activity. It may be the main reason for the great attraction of academic jobs. Laboratory scientists have told me that the opportunity to work with graduate students keeps them in the university. For them, other options would center on research in commercial laboratories, but there the principal investigator would be assisted by technicians, and that is considered a far less creative interaction. — Henry Rosovsky

I think it would shock most people if they really knew what we have each survived by the time we graduate high school. — Jennifer Elisabeth

I have always noticed in high school yearbooks the similarity of all the graduate write-ups - how, after only a few pages, the identities of all the unsullied young faces blur, how one person melts into another and another: Susan likes to eat at Wendy's; Donald was on the basketball team; Norman is vain about his varsity sweater; Gillian broke her arm on Spring Retreat; Brian is a car nut; Sue wants to live in Hawaii; Don wants to make a million and be a ski bum; Noreen wants to live in Europe; Gordon wants to be a radio deejay in Australia. At what point in our lives do we stop blurring? When do we become crisp individuals? What must we do in order to end these fuzzy identities - to clarify just who it is we really are? — Douglas Coupland

My second grade teacher told me I would never graduate high school. That I was going to be a juvenile delinquent. — Miles Teller

In fact, if they didn't let me commute, I would not have taken the role because I wanted to graduate high school with my classmates. I remember my agent's jaw dropping when I told him if I couldn't commute I didn't want the role. — Sarah Chalke

If there's a character type I despise, it's the all-capable, all-knowing, physically perfect protagonist. My idea of hell would be to be trapped in a four-hundred page, first-person, first-tense, running monologue with a character like that. I think writers who produce characters along those lines should graduate from high school and move on. — Craig Johnson

Head Start graduates are more likely to graduate from high school and less likely to need special education, repeat a grade, or commit crimes in adolescence. — Joe Baca

I'll graduate high school with a major in Cynicism & a minor in Irritation. — Chelsea Pitcher

Trust me, high school ends. You graduate and get away from all the people you never want to see again-it's all good. — Chad Michael Murray

When I was in high school, we used to do 15-20 hours of dance per week, and then when you graduate, you don't have that much time on your hands anymore. — Laura Slade Wiggins

Ah." Ax nodded. "She does not understand how menacing we are." He tapped her on the shoulder. "You do not know me," he said, "but I am a juvenile delinquent. I do not trust authority figures, I probably will not graduate from high school, and statistics say my present rowdiness and vandalism will likely lead to more serious crimes. I am a dangerous fellow and I am causing mayhem in this store." He reached behind her and pulled three jars of baby food from the top shelf. Shoved them behind a box of macaroni. Shuffled the Chess Whizzed in front of the Marshmallow Fluff. Tossed a bag of lady's shavers onto a bag of hamburger buns. "There. I have now shamelessly destroyed the symmetry of this shelf, undoing hours of labor by underpaid store employees. If you could see me, you would be frightened." "If she could see you, she'd have you committed," Marco muttered. — Katherine Applegate

If you put a smile on someones face, it was a good day. — Harvey Stelman

When I was 17, I was excited to graduate from high school! — Tyler Blackburn

My parents didn't make a lot of money. My dad was not a high school graduate - he didn't have a career as such; he was a printing salesman essentially for most of his working life. — Al Franken

I failed angst in high school. They let me graduate anyway. — John Scalzi

My parents' biggest thing was that they just wanted me to graduate high school and go to college. They couldn't fathom me acting for the rest of my life. — Mila Kunis

The American high school graduate is two years behind his English, French or German counterpart; in Alabama, God knows how far behind. — Gore Vidal

This is not a contest with your child. The winner is not the one with more points. The winner is the one whose child still loves them when they graduate from high school. — Martin L. Kutscher

I have a real interest in baking. I'd love to go to culinary school. That's actually my plan: to graduate high school and go to culinary school. — Ed Oxenbould

I believe that a proper education in grade school would achieve much more for the general public than getting an M.A. in the best college today ever would. You do not need millions of courses across decades and decades. That is a modern absurdity. It is the result of a worthless, self-perpetuating educational bureaucracy. Even with the explosion of knowledge, you can give people a proper, thorough education by the time they are a normal high school graduate. — Leonard Peikoff

It's not like we stop needing the comfort and help that a good story can bring when we graduate from high school. I am still looking for answers to questions about the meaning of life. I am still trying to fathom the wondrous strangeness of love. I am still trying to make my way through life despite heartache and loss. — John Green

A young college graduate earns 63% more than a high-school graduate if both work full-time - and the high-school graduate is much less likely to work at all. — Anonymous

I didn't even graduate from high school. I've never told anybody that before. I got my degree later, when I was in the army. — Tommy Lasorda

Thanks to the nation's testing mania (which I like to call 'No Child Left Untested' rather than 'No Child Left Behind'), children are being barraged with a nonstop volley of standardized tests. From kindergarten to graduate school, students are subjected to an unprecedented number of high-stakes tests — Laurie E. Rozakis

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

Every high school and college graduate in America should, I think, have some familiarity with statistics, economics and a foreign language such as Spanish. Religion may not be as indispensable, but the humanities should be a part of our repertory. They may not enrich our wallets, but they do enrich our lives. They civilize us. They provide context. — Nicholas Kristof

I didn't graduate high school, so I never got a teacher's education, I'm mostly self-read, self-taught. I always loved music, so I would probably either be in a band with another group of people, or an arranger, a producer, a musicologist, a music history guy, something to do with music. Either that, or I would probably be in jail. Or dead. — Billy Joel

Students are suffering under incredibly high tuitions and high student loan interest rates. They graduate from school, and they're having a very difficult time finding a job. They don't feel as though there are honest leaders who are listening to them, and who will be a part of the solution. — Tulsi Gabbard

We all love stories, even if they're not true. As we grow up, one of the ways we learn about the world is through the stories we hear. Some are about particular events and personalities within our personal circles of family and friends. Some are part of the larger cultures we belong to - the myths, fables, and fairy tales about our own ways of life that have captivated people for generations. In stories that are told often, the line between fact and myth can become so blurred that we easily mistake one for the other. This is true of a story that many people believe about education, even though it's not real and never really was. It goes like this: Young children go to elementary school mainly to learn the basic skills of reading, writing, and mathematics. These skills are essential so they can do well academically in high school. If they go on to higher education and graduate with a good degree, they'll find a well-paid job and the country will prosper too. — Ken Robinson

Currently, only 70 percent of our high school students earn diplomas with their peers, and less than one-third of our high school students graduate prepared for success in a four-year college. — Ruben Hinojosa

I felt I ought not to be wasting time, and I hurried to graduate from high school to enroll at UCSD. I also hurried to finish college, to go on to higher studies. By the time I was in my teens, I had a strong sense of mission, wanting to discover something important or solve a major problem in biology or medicine. — Bruce Beutler

This could be your big ticket," he said. "You know what happens to you at art school?"
I shook my head.
"All that good natural technique you have? All that detail? They'll beat it right out of you. They'll be so threatened by it, they'll make you start throwing paint at the canvas like a monkey. By the time you graduate, the only thing you'll be able to do is teach art to high school kids."
Okay, I thought. I'm glad he's excited for me.
"On the plus side, you'll probably get laid a lot."
I gave him a nod and a quick thumbs-up. He patted me on the shoulder and then left me alone. — Steve Hamilton

My dad didn't graduate from high school, ended up being a printing salesman, probably never made more than $8,000 a year. My mom sold real estate and did it part time. — Al Franken

Linus: What's wrong, Charlie Brown?
Charlie Brown: I just got terrible news. The teacher says we're going on a field trip to an art museum; and I have to get an A on my report or I'll fail the whole course. Why do we have to have all this pressure about grades, Linus?
Linus: Well, I think that the purpose of going to school is to get good grades so then you can go on to high school; and the purpose is to study hard so you can get good grades so you can go to college; and the purpose of going to college is so you can get good grades so you can go on to graduate school; and the purpose of that is to work hard and get good grades so we can get a job and be successful so that we can get married and have kids so we can send them to grammar school to get good grades so they can go to high school to get good grades so they can go to college and work hard ...
Charlie Brown: Good grief! — Charles M. Schulz

I realized I couldn't have one foot in the fiction world and one foot in the nonfiction world, which is why 'Here I Go Again' is so not me. I didn't graduate from high school in the '90s, I never listened to metal music, and I don't time travel. — Jen Lancaster

You do not know me, but I am a juvenile delinquent. I do not trust authority figures, I probably will not graduate from high school, and statistics say my present rowdiness and vandalism will likely lead to more serious crimes. I am a dangerous fellow, and I am causing mayhem in this store. [ ... ] There. I have now shamelessly destroyed the symmetry of this shelf, undoing hours of labor by underpaid store employees. If you could see me, you would be frightened. — Katherine Applegate

I don't care if you're so poor you live in a cardboard box, if you fail to graduate high school, or if thousands of miles try to separate us. I'll always love you just as much as i do now. — Samantha Gudger

depletion and climate change. For the older generation it's easy to misunderstand the word 'student' or 'graduate': to my contemporaries, at college in the 1980s, it meant somebody engaged in a liberal, academic education, often with hours of free time to dream, protest, play in a rock band or do research. Today's undergraduates have been tested every month of their lives, from kindergarten to high school. They are the measured inputs and outputs of a commercialized global higher education market worth $1.2 trillion a year - excluding the USA. Their free time is minimal: precarious part-time jobs are essential to their existence, so that they are a key part of the modern workforce. Plus they have become a vital asset for the financial system. In 2006, Citigroup alone made $220 million clear profit from its student loan book.2 — Paul Mason

A Return-to-Work Candidate To utilize skills and abilities to meet organizational goals in a loyal, dependable, and professional manner Excellent phone skills Good communication skills Sound judgment, good decision making skills Good character: honest, trustworthy, dependable Assignments completed on time Willingness to go the extra mile Team player High school graduate — Jay A. Block

1. The End of Summer The moon rose high in the sky. Rylie's veins pulsed with its power. It pressed against her bones, strained against her muscles, and fought to erupt from her flesh. A wolf's howl broke the silence of the night. It called to her, telling her to change. "No," she whimpered, digging fingernails into her shins hard enough to draw blood. "No." Rylie burned. The fire was going to consume her. The moon called her name, but it would be the end of her humanity if she obeyed it. She would never see her family again. She would never see her friends or graduate high school. Rylie might not die, but her life would be over. Yet if she didn't change, the boy she loved would die at the jaws of the one who changed her. Rylie had to lose him or lose her entire life. But was love worth becoming a monster? — S.M. Reine

I'm 18, I'm going to graduate high school in a few months. — Camilla Belle

There's a lot for you to live for. Good things are definitely in your future, Leonard. I'm sure of it. You have no idea how many interesting people you'll meet after high school's over. Your life partner, your best friend, the most wonderful person you'll ever know is sitting in some high school right now waiting to graduate and walk into your life - maybe even feeling all the same things you are, maybe even wondering about you, hoping that you're strong enough to make it to the future where you'll meet. — Matthew Quick

I went through high school, but I didn't graduate. — Evel Knievel

When every high school graduate can spell the word, 'inauguration,' let's put lampshades on our heads and listen to his speeches until Obama's voice gives out. — Paula Poundstone

I didn't give it much thought back then. I just wanted to get all the words straight and collect my A. — Gayle Forman

Through high school, college, graduate school and beyond, I had a number of relationships that were wonderful. — Frederick Lenz

Although my Dad was a talented calligrapher and both of my younger brothers were successful, I was the first one in my family to graduate from high school. — Betty Dodson

I had an excellent math and physics teacher in high school named T.C. Patel, and in the university, I had truly dedicated professors in both physics and mathematics who gave me a sound foundation with which to pursue graduate studies. — Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

Our goal here in New York is to ensure that every child who graduates high school is ready to start a career or start college and to dramatically increase the number of students that graduate from college. — Michael Bloomberg

Like many others, I have deep misgivings about the state of education in the United States. Too many of our students fail to graduate from high school with the basic skills they will need to succeed in the 21st Century economy, much less prepared for the rigors of college and career. Although our top universities continue to rank among the best in the world, too few American students are pursuing degrees in science and technology. Compounding this problem is our failure to provide sufficient training for those already in the workforce. — Bill Gates

Losing this part of my life, this time of being a mother to growing children, is indeed an ending. For months, I've carried that quiet sorrow, getting used to its heaviness, the way one learns to live with the chronic soreness of a joint, a tenderness in wrist or knee. What I long to do now is to let the sadness go as well, to have faith that even as my sons graduate from high school and leave home, and this phase of our family life draws to a close, there will be new beginnings not just for them, but for all of us. — Katrina Kenison

For the first ten years after I got out of graduate school, I studied success. I read every book I could get my hands on and took every training I could find, and that allowed me to become an expert in this area. I learned how to create high self-esteem and success in my own life and in the lives of others. — Jack Canfield