School Formal Quotes & Sayings

Real fairy tales are not for the fainthearted. Children get eaten by witches and chased by wolves; women fall into comas and are tortured by evil relatives. Somehow all that pain and suffering is worthwhile, though, when it leads to the ending: happily ever after. Suddenly it no longer matters if you got a B- on your midterm in French or you're the only girl in the school who doesn't have a date for the spring formal. Happily ever after trumps everything. But what if ever after could change? — Jodi Picoult

I'm a school teacher, and later on, well past my formal education, I became very interested in science. — Bernard Beckett

As formal teaching and training grow in extent, there is the danger of creating an undesirable split between the experience gained in more direct associations and what is acquired in school. This danger was never greater than at the present time, on account of the rapid growth in the last few centuries of knowledge and technical modes of skill. — John Dewey

I pretty much left full-time, formal education when I was 11, so that was when I was taken out of the school system ... The longest stretch I would go back for was a term and a half when I was about 14. — Daniel Radcliffe

I didn't get a high school diploma. I really didn't have much of an education, which left me open to educating myself throughout my life, without the limitations on intellectual curiosity a formal education can impose. I followed what interested me. — Elayne Boosler

I began drawing when I was nearly 3, and after finishing the sixth grade, I left school to paint and was tutored at home. My father didn't think a formal education was necessary for a painter. — Jamie Wyeth

The present syllabus in our high schools corresponds almost exactly to what was known in 1640. — W.W. Sawyer

I have never been impressed by the formal schools of ethics. — Robert A. Heinlein

A Mother's Advice

Manners matter, regardless of your position in society. There is no excuse in this world to practice bad manners, especially at the table. I found that out in high school. I was invited to my boyfriend's house for dinner. His parents were somewhat formal, and I knew the dinner would be "fancy," at least in my mind. My family wasn't upper class (or even middle class), and my mother never had what would be called "social graces."
Before I left, my mother gave me a piece of advice: hold your head high, be quiet, and take the lead from his mother. Even though I was scared to death, I did what my mother advised and got through the experience with flying colors.
To this day, my mother's advice has gotten me through many difficult situations, especially ones that are totally new to me! With my mother's simple advice, I know I could dine with the Queen of England, just by following her lead. Thanks, Mother!

-Deborah Ford — Deborah Ford

I think bravery is a lot less formal than it sounds. Bravery is being able to have a conversation with a stranger. It's going back to school even after years of being away. It's being you even when it's easier to be someone else. — Marquita Burke-DeJesus

As an actress, I never went to film school, and I think if I had gone to film school, I would have started with a great advantage. If you have a strong intent to do anything in life, you can do it, but it always helps to have formal training. — Preity Zinta

My mother, who was professional schoolteacher, was particularly concerned about our formal education and even went so far as to start a private school together with some other parents so that our intellectual needs would be met. — Robert B. Laughlin

She called me Nerdy because I wore glasses and read books and ate yogurt on my lunch break. I'm not really a nerd: I only aspire to be one. Because of the high-school-dropout thing, I'm a self-didact. (Not a dirty word, look it up.) I read constantly. I think. But I lack formal education. So I'm left with the feeling that I'm smarter than everyone around me but that if I ever got around really smart people - people who went to universities and drank wine and spoke Latin - that they'd be bored as hell by me. It's a lonely way to go through life. So I wear the name as a badge of honor. That someday I may not totally bore some really smart people. The question is: How do you find smart people? — Gillian Flynn

Throughout my formal education I spent many, many hours in public and school libraries. Libraries became courts of last resort, as it were. The current definitive answer to almost any question can be found within the four walls of most libraries. — Arthur Ashe

Every child should be taught how to think, read and write. — Lailah Gifty Akita

In a setting of formal education, one would imagine that abstract thought would be encouraged, and that questioning obvious errors within the current system wouldn't be frowned upon. Wrong again; these cunts are out to protect their pocket books and paradigms. — Scott Parker

Who wouldn't love this jargon we dress common sense in: "formal innovation is no longer transformative, having been co-opted by the forces of stabilization and post-industrial inertia," blah, blah. But this co-optation might actually be a good thing if it helped keep younger writers from being able to treat mere formal ingenuity as an end in itself. MTV-type co-optation could end up a great prophylactic against cleveritis - you know, the dreaded grad-school syndrome of like "Watch me use seventeen different points of view in this scene of a guy eating a Saltine." The real point of that shit is "Like me because I'm clever" - which of course is itself derived from commercial art's axiom about audience-affection determining art's value. — David Foster Wallace

The logical statements entered into the notebook are broken down into six categories: (1) statement of the problem, (2) hypotheses as to the cause of the problem, (3) experiments designed to test each hypothesis, (4) predicted results of the experiments, (5) observed results of the experiments and (6) conclusions from the results of the experiments. This is not different from the formal arrangement of many college and high-school lab notebooks but the purpose here is no longer just busywork. The purpose now is precise guidance of thoughts that will fail if they are not accurate. The — Robert M. Pirsig

Formal education in British India was remarkable for its lack of connection with its Indian environment. Like the African persuaded to cover his nakedness with a Mother Hubbard, we wore mental Mother Hubbards, and they were often a sad fit. Our textbooks had been compiled by Englishmen for English children, of whom there were none in my school and few in any school in India. — Nayantara Sahgal

We're not a vocational school. If someone wants to get a high-paying job, I would hope that there are easier ways to do it than working through a formal computer science curriculum. — Philip Greenspun

Since this was a formal undead gathering, there would be food - all kinds - drinks, dancing, and festivities, while those in power pondered whether or not to slaughter half the people around them. In other words, like a high-school prom. — Jeaniene Frost

In spite of all the progress we seem to have made, human emotions stay the same. Deep inside our hearts, we don't change very much. This poem was written two thousand years ago or more. It's from a time long before the quatrains and other formal styles you've learned in school were established. And yet, even today, we can understand the feelings of people from that time. You don't need education or scholarship for that. These feelings can be understood by anybody, I think. — Kyoichi Katayama

My dear Sue, - Of course I wish you joy! And also of course I will give you away. What I suggest is that, as you have no house of your own, you do not marry from your school friend's, but from mine. It would be more proper, I think, since I am, as you say, the person nearest related to you in this part of the world. I don't see why you sign your letter in such a new and terribly formal way? Surely you care a bit about me still! - Ever your affectionate, Jude. — Thomas Hardy

Nobody wants to give up a weekend-long excuse to dress up and attempt to outshine one another. — Elizabeth Eulberg

Over the next two years UNICEF will focus on improving access to and the quality of education to provide children who have dropped out of school or who work during school hours the opportunity to gain a formal education! — Roger Moore

I started writing poetry in high school because I wanted desperately to write, but somehow, writing stories didn't appeal to me, and I loved the flow and the feel and sense of poetry, especially that of what one might call formal verse. — L.E. Modesitt Jr.

Practically all of the successful Negroes in this country are of the uneducated type or of that of Negroes who have had no formal education at all. The large majority of the Negroes who have put on the finishing touches of our best colleges are all but worthless in the development of their people. If after leaving school they have the opportunity to give out to Negroes what traducers of the race would like to have it learn such persons may thereby earn a living at teaching or preaching what they have been taught but they never become a constructive force in the development of the race. The so-called school, then, becomes a questionable factor in the life of this despised people. As another has well said, to handicap a student by teaching him that his black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching. It kills one's aspirations and dooms him to — Carter G. Woodson

One night I begged Robin, a scientist by training, to watch Arthur Miller's 'Death of a Salesman' with me on PBS. He lasted about one act, then turned to me in horror: 'This is how you spend your days? Thinking about things like this?' I was ashamed. I could have been learning about string theory or how flowers pollinate themselves.
I think his remark was the beginning of my crisis of faith. Like so many of my generation in graduate school, I had turned to literature as a kind of substitute for formal religion, which no longer fed my soul, or for therapy, which I could not afford ... I became interested in exploring the theory of nonfiction and in writing memoir, a genre that gives us access to that lost Middlemarch of reflection and social commentary. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

Other people do better going on to grad school and others yet are naturally inclined and do just fine without any formal training at all. Everyone is different. The only things I think are imperative are focus, determination and hard work. — Toks Olagundoye

Because much of the content of education is not cognitively natural, the process of mastering it may not always be easy and pleasant, notwithstanding the mantra that learning is fun. Children may be innately motivated to make friends, acquire status, hone motor skills, and explore the physical world, but they are not necessarily motivated to adapt their cognitive faculties to unnatural tasks like formal mathematics. A family, peer group, and culture that ascribe high status to school achievement may be needed to give a child the motive to persevere toward effortful feats of learning whose rewards are apparent only over the long term. — Steven Pinker

If you wouldn't mind coming with us, sir? I am arresting you now and will shortly make a formal charge at the station.' I was so happy, so blissfully, radiantly, wildly happy that if I could have sung I would have sung. If I could have danced I would have danced. I was free. At last I was free. I was going on a journey now where every decision would be taken for me, every thought would be thought for me and every day planned for me. I was going back to school. — Stephen Fry

In the U.S., coaches could be the father next door. They had no formal training. They're like old hockey players. They don't go to school and study. — Gabe Polsky

It was these Prussian schools that introduced many of the features we now take for granted. There was teaching by year group rather than by ability, which made sense if the aim was to produce military recruits rather than rounded citizens. There was formal pedagogy, in which children sat at rows of desks in front of standing teachers, rather than, say, walking around together in the ancient Greek fashion. There was the set school day, punctuated by the ringing of bells. There was a predetermined syllabus, rather than open-ended learning. There was the habit of doing several subjects in one day, rather than sticking to one subject for more than a day. These features make sense, argues Davies, if you wish to mould people into suitable recruits for a conscript army to fight Napoleon. — Matt Ridley

I entered the literary world, really, from outside. My entire background has been in sciences; I was a biology major in college, then went to medical school. I've never had any formal training in writing. — Khaled Hosseini

In terms of formal education, I may somewhat lacking. I never finished school. I am a self-taught entrepreneur, that's the best kind there is, trust me — Aravind Adiga

My dad was a composer and a musician, but he never finished high school. His formal education was rather minimal from the standards of today's college graduates and Ph.D.'s, but he had a deep interest in questions of science and questions of the universe. — Brian Greene

One day a partially deaf four years old child came home with a note in his pocket from his teacher, "Your Tommy is too stupid to learn, get him out of school." His mother read the note and answered, "My Tommy is not too stupid to learn, I will teach him myself." And that Tommy grew up to be the great Thomas Edison. Thomas Edison had only three months of formal schooling. — Shiv Khera

I've never had formal drama-school training; I've just picked things up as I've gone along. — Agyness Deyn

I have a conviction that a few weeks spent in a well organized summer camp may be of more value educationally than a whole year of formal school work. — Charles William Eliot

Fpr ome aftermppm a week leading up to the formal, the entire senior school body would pile into our massive gymnasium and learn dances that we would NEVER DANCE AGAIN, except at our own children's formals, perhaps. Nevertheless, we threw ourselves into the task as if we were living in a Jane Austen novel and this was the only way we would ever fit into society. (from How to Be Happy: A Memoir of Love, Sex and Teenage Confusion) — David Burton

Pink was for girls.
Girly girls who wore flavored lip gloss and read magazines and talked on the phone lying on their perfect, lacy bedspreads with their feet in the air. Girls who spent six months looking for the perfect dress to wear to the school formal.
Girls who liked boys. — Lili Wilkinson

This was a boy who could make a school uniform look good. What he did to formal wear was damn near criminal. — Rachel Hawkins

When thinkers accept those who deny the existence of thinking, as fellow thinkers of a different school of thought - it is they who achieve the destruction of the mind. They grant the enemy's basic premise, thus granting the sanction of reason to formal dementia. A basic premise is an absolute that permits no co-operation with its antithesis and tolerates no tolerance. — Ayn Rand

I never considered I might make a career out of writing as I was going to school, so when I did turn my attentions that way, I was very ill prepared, having only what I read as a guide, and no formal training whatsoever. I credit that very ignorance with a great deal of my success. — Kim Harrison

I am a nationalist, and a Pan-Africanist, first and foremost. I was well grounded in history before ever taking a history course. I did not spend much formal time in school - I had to work. — John Henrik Clarke

Indian Art broadened my seeing, loosened the formal tightness I had learned in England's schools. Its bigness and stark reality baffled my white man's understanding ... I had been schooled to see outsides only, not struggle to pierce. — Emily Carr

I am a passionate reader, having been tutored very early by my mother. I avidly devoured all books on chemistry that I could find. Formal chemistry at school seemed boring by comparison, and my performance was routine. In contrast, I did spectacularly well in mathematics and sailed through classes and exams with ease. — Richard J. Roberts

Abraham Lincoln, a predecessor of Barack Obama in both the White House and the Illinois state legislature, had eighteen months of formal education and became a soldier, surveyor, postmaster, rail-splitter, tavern keeper, and self-taught prairie lawyer. Obama went to Occidental College, Columbia University, and Harvard Law School, and became a "community organizer." I'm not sure that's progress--and it's certainly not "sustainable. — Mark Steyn

When I used to do abstract paintings at school, like everyone else, the tutor said these would make great curtains. I would always neglect the formal stuff that was going on by using colour, because colour kind of came naturally to me. — Damien Hirst

Due to financial reasons, I dropped out of school after eight years of formal schooling. — Philip Emeagwali

It's interesting because with a lot of people who I've met in comedy, it seems not to matter what your background is. In terms of formal schooling - I feel like that's a nineteenth century term - but in terms of where you went to high school or college, or wherever, all that really is irrelevant, I have found, in comedy. — Ellie Kemper

The research we do at the local level - collaboratively - is what makes formal, outside research work. Outside research cannot be installed like a car part - it has to be fitted, adjusted, and refined for the school contexts we workd in. — Mike Schmoker

It's critical that children spend time before they arrive in school in a warm, attractive and inclusive environment, where they can learn through play, master social skills and prepare for formal schooling. — Michael Gove

It is clearly absurd to limit the term 'education' to a person's formal schooling. — Murray N. Rothbard

I'm not one to insist that a man can't possibly make it without a lot of formal education, since my own formal education pretty much stopped when I graduated from Independence High School in 1901. And then there was a twenty-two-year gap, while I worked on a farm and as a railroad timekeeper and served in the Army and did a lot of other things, before I started to attend night classes at Kansas City Law School - and I left there in 1925 and never got a degree. But I've tried to increase my knowledge all my life by reading and reading and reading, — Harry Truman

[Homeschooling] ... recipe for genius: More of family and less of school, more of parents and less of peers, more creative freedom and less formal lessons. — Raymond S. Moore

I've always had an ear for music so one day I sat at the piano and picked out some notes. I tried to improve, but without formal instruction, there was only so much I could learn. When I went off to school, I demanded my studies include piano lessons. By the time I was ten, I could play Mozart concertos. — Magda Alexander

I wonder in what way I would function as a person, in a society without ever attending school. I'd be myself. — J.R. Rim