Quotes & Sayings About Not Attending College

Not graduating high school on time leads to fewer chances of attending college and obtaining good paying jobs, and creates instead higher chances of incarceration and unemployment. — Al Sharpton

The colleges and other institutions of learning are going too far, in my opinion. I think 50% of those attending educational institutions, having the professions in view, would be better off with a common school education that would enable them to earn a living, rather than sit around in offices and wait for clients.
W.A. Clark (MT Senator, 1901-1907) — Bill Dedman

By contrast, a schoolteacher in North Carolina recounted the story of a sick black woman preparing for death. She gave the teacher her will, plans for a funeral and a grave, and insurance policies, requesting that she look after them. When the teacher asked her if she wanted to see her husband, who had deserted her, she replied, "No, and if you ever hear from him, tell him I don't leave him even a good wish." She then displayed an envelope, containing what she called her most prized possession, and handed it to the teacher for safekeeping. "When I am gone, no one will care about this envelope. Will you promise to keep it, so I will know I am not all gone so soon?" The envelope contained college credits she had accumulated after attending night school while working all day. 2 — Leon F. Litwack

If I had known how much I would miss these sensations I might have experienced them differently, recognized their shabby glamour, respected the ticking clock that defined this entire experience. I would have put aside my resentment, dropped my defenses. I might have a basic understanding of European history or economics. More abstractly, I might feel I had truly been somewhere, open and porous and hungry to learn. Because being a student was an enviable identity and one I can only reclaim by attending community college late in life for a bookmaking class or something. — Lena Dunham

You're really not that good a mechanic, Edward. Maybe you should have Rosalie take a look at it tonight, just so you look good if Mike decides to let you help, you know. Not that it wouldn't be fun to watch his face if Rosalie showed up to help. But since Rosalie is supposed to be across the country attending college, I guess that's not the best idea. Too bad. — Stephenie Meyer

This was the sort of girl who should be attending college, not ones like that dreadful Minkoff girl, that brutal and slovenly girl who had almost been raped by one of the janitors just outside of his office. Dr. Talc shuddered at the very thought of Miss Minkoff. In class she had Insulted and challenged and vilified him at every turn, egging the Reilly monster to join in the attack. He would never forget those two; no one on the faculty ever would. They were like two Huns sweeping down on Rome. Dr. Talc idly wondered if they had married each other. Each certainly deserved the other. — John Kennedy Toole

I was part of a group called Casanova Fly, doing bouncer work, attending college and working in a pizza shop when I first met producer Sylvia Robinson who came into the pizza shop where I was flipping the dough. I was rapping in the park in Englewood, and she heard about what I was doing. — Big Bank Hank

Public education must be viewed from the lens of providing each child with the learning environment that best meets his or her needs. If we can send a low-income child to a parochial school, knowing that his odds of attending college will increase as a result, then that should be our mission. — Jeb Bush

In the kitchen, I turn on a TV set that has hundreds of channels devoted to every conceivable subject including celebrity bunion removal (This week: David Hasselhoff). I tune in to one of the literally dozens of news shows, all of which feature a format of 55 percent celebrities promoting things, 30 percent emails from viewers, and 15 percent YouTube videos showing bears jumping on trampolines. While I'm catching up on these developments, I turn on the programmable coffeemaker, which I hope that someday, perhaps by attending community college, I will learn to program. — Dave Barry

I was homeschooled until I was 14, and then when I was 14, I began attending college. Mom was not playing about that education. She always said, "Acting is a privilege not a priority. Education is the priority. If you're not bringing home As and Bs, you can't go on the audition." — Aldis Hodge

In Venezuela, which doesn't have thousands of prestige universities like the U.S., people usually stay at home while attending to college. After they graduate, they move for a job or get married. — Juan Pablo Galavis

If you spend any amount of time doing media analysis, it's clear that the most frenzied moral panic surrounding young women's sexuality comes from the mainstream media, which loves to report about how promiscuous girls are, whether they're acting up on spring break, getting caught topless on camera, or catching all kinds of STIs. Unsurprisingly, these types of articles and stories generally fail to mention that women are attending college at the highest rates in history, and that we're the majority of undergraduate and master's students. Well-educated and socially engaged women just don't make for good headlines, it seems. — Jessica Valenti

Kate, don't be like that. You know I only did so well because I yearn-see, SAT word- to follow you to college and steal your heart."
"Uh-huh. Too bad for you I don't plan on attending clown college."
He grinned. "Only you would ignore the incredibly sweet thing I just said."
"Only you would describe one of your asinine comments as incredibly sweet. — Elizabeth Scott

I started attending community college when I was 14 or 15, just doing general education stuff like history and mathematics. Then I went on to California State University Long Beach to pursue a degree in journalism. And then I ended up dropping out to found Oculus. — Palmer Luckey

Message to all you crazed parents desperately hiring tutors and padding your kid's thin resume: Chillax. Attending an elite college is no guarantee of leadership, life success, or earnings potential. — Nina Easton

Economists actually disagree about whether there are significant economic returns from attending an elite college versus a less-selective one. — Emily Oster

It is a fact perhaps kept a little too much in the background, that mothers have a self larger than their maternity, and that when their sons have become taller than themselves, and are gone from them to college or into the world, there are wide spaces of their time which are not filled with praying for their boys, reading old letters, and envying yet blessing those who are attending to their shirt-buttons. — George Eliot

Women are an eternal subject, which is a lot like being subjected, or subjugated, or a subject nation, even. There are comparatively few articles about whether men are happy or why their marriages also fail or how nice or not their bodies are, even the movie-star bodies. They are the gender that commits the great majority of crime, particularly violent crime, and they are the majority of suicides as well. American men are falling behind women in attending college, and have fallen farther in the current economic depression than women, which you'd think would make them interesting subjects of inquiry. — Rebecca Solnit