Quotes & Sayings About University Degree

I have a completely worthless degree: a BS in Photojournalism from Boston University (BU). With this degree, I suppose I could have gotten a job teaching grade school kids how to photograph their relatives, but knowing about B&W photo processing and developing and how to shoot a picture story is good basic info that every photographer should have. — Peter Menzel

I'd always enjoyed acting at high school, and I was all lined up to do an honours degree course in biology at a Canadian university, and at the eleventh hour the drama teacher I had said, 'You know, you'll get a lot more girls if you go into acting,' and that kinda sold it. — Matt Frewer

So when I got out of the military, I went back to school in biology, and earned a biology degree at the University of Texas, and then did some graduate work in it. — Elizabeth Moon

Do you think parents at your school would rather their kid be depressed at Yale or happy at University of Arizona?" The colleague quickly replied, "My guess is 75 percent of the parents would rather see their kids depressed at Yale. They figure that the kid can straighten the emotional stuff out in his/her 20's, but no one can go back and get the Yale undergrad degree."1 — Julie Lythcott-Haims

There's a kind of a line between music and math, so I guess I got the music gene, thank goodness. But my mother wasn't too thrilled. She wanted me to go to university and get a degree or do something, and my father, he liked opera so he wasn't too thrilled either, because he wanted me to be an opera singer and I didn't have - as he said, I don't really have the strength to do that. — Olivia Newton-John

I have an education degree from the University of Minnesota, and I was a teacher for about a minute. — Loni Anderson

I was 35 when I started taking classes at Ohio University. After I got my degree, I kept working at the mill. When I was 45, I decided I was going to try to learn how to write short stories. — Donald Ray Pollock

People don't really know themselves until they're 30. Like most people nowadays, I went to university, got a degree and wandered for a bit. I trained to be a chartered accountant, which I didn't much enjoy, and it was only slowly that the idea of becoming a creative writer gelled. — Wilbur Smith

King Solomon did not have a university degree, but had a doctorate in commonsense. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Soon after my degree, in 1958 I went to the United States to enlarge my experience and to familiarize myself with particle accelerators. I spent about one and a half years at Columbia University. — Carlo Rubbia

I try not to look like a university man here ... My fellow-guests think of a university degree as a disgraceful preliminary to the blood-sucking life of the bourgeoisie. A sign, moreover, that a man has to earn his own living. — Eilis Dillon

Somewhere in Rwanda, a rural farmer is dreaming of providing an education for her children. Not just high school, but maybe even a university degree. Such a dream used to seem out of reach. — Sylvia Mathews Burwell

I thought of myself as an itinerant brain
the equivalent of a strolling player of Elizabethan times, or else a troubadour, clutching my university degree like a cheap lute. — Margaret Atwood

I grew up with a single mom who was a waitress. We were on food stamps. My mom then got Pell Grants, put herself through college to get a degree to get a better job. Because we were broke, I then had to go to a state school. I went to Temple University, and had to get loans. So I grew up in a world where I saw the government helping individuals pull themselves up, and saw it work very successfully. — Adam McKay

Believe it or not, I was just given an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Tennessee. — Dolly Parton

I had a teacher's degree and a degree in Oriental Philosophy from the University of Massachusetts. I thought I was going to India to study but all of a sudden, I had a career in music. It really surprised me. — Buffy Sainte-Marie

Literature offers the thrill of minds of great clarity wrestling with the endless problems and delights of being human. To engage with them is to engage with oneself, and the lasting rewards are not confined to specific career paths. — Jonathan Stroud

I wanted to stay in New York to pursue acting, but my dad urged me to get a four-year degree. Reading about the film school at Florida State University, he suggested I go there. I received my bachelor's degree in 2003. — Lauren Miller

Well, we are terribly divided politically, yes, and, you know, I don't mean to intimidate you and your listeners but I have a master's degree in anthropology from the University of Chicago. — Kurt Vonnegut

The family's dream was to see me receive a high degree abroad and to return to become a university professor - on the door to my study room, a sign was placed reading 'Dr. Ahmed,' even though I was still far from becoming a doctor. — Ahmed Zewail

Anyone can get a degree or a certificate in something. Big deal. A piece of paper from a university somewhere doesn't define a person. It won't tell you who I am. — Rachel Gibson

I went to McGill University, but I didn't graduate. They won't graduate me because I didn't have a degree in any one thing. I studied everything and they were like, "You studied too many things, so we can't give you a degree." — Rachelle Lefevre

After taking my B.A. degree in 1939 I remained at the University for a further year to take an advanced course in Biochemistry, and surprised myself and my teachers by obtaining a first class examination result. — Frederick Sanger

I was fortunate in that I attended university in Canada in the early 1970s when you could take a true liberal arts degree with no programmes, majors or minors. — O.R. Melling

I thought I'd be a professional rugby player or go to university and get some degree in construction. — Luke Bracey

I studied law at university and was sort of grooming myself to go into that kind of career. I filmed 'The Wedge' while studying, which was very difficult, but I'm proud I completed my degree. — Rebel Wilson

At 27 or so I thought, you know, I actually do really want to make money and have a proper life, and I don't want to be a loser. I know! I'll go to university and get a proper degree and maybe get a job in media ... I went and did an English degree. — Sharon Horgan

Come on let's see the degree."
Katherine unrolled her scroll displaying a long declaration in Latin affixed with a red seal proclaiming her a Master of Art.
"Imagine working for years to obtain a piece of paper we can hardly read " Katherine joked.
"And to officially declare you have talent " Suzy returned. — E.A. Bucchianeri

I just got an honorary degree from Glasgow University, and I had to wear around very painful shoes so that I didn't laugh all the way through the ceremony because I felt like an outlaw. — Denise Mina

It will be readily admitted, that a degree conferred by an university, ought to be a pledge to the public that he who holds it possesses a certain quantity of knowledge. — Charles Babbage

Having a college degree gave me the opportunity to be ... well-rounded. Also, the people I met at the university, most of them are still my colleagues now. People I've known for years are all in the industry together. — Jon Secada

My mother worked at the telephone company during the day and sold Tupperware at night. Evenings, she took classes when she could at University of Maryland's University College, bringing me along to do homework while she studied to get the degree she hoped would offer her and me greater opportunities. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

We must have a university degree even if we never get a job in the area of knowledge we were forced to study. — Paulo Coelho

INSUFFICIENT EDUCATION. This is a handicap that may be overcome with comparative ease. Experience has proven that the best-educated people are often those who are known as 'self-made' or self-educated. It takes more than a university degree to make one a person of education. Any person who is educated has learned to get whatever they want in life without violating the rights of others. Education consists not so much of knowledge, but of knowledge effectively and persistently applied. People are paid not merely for what they know, but more particularly for what they do with what they know. — Napoleon Hill

Every drama school in the country turned me down, and so I was lucky to study drama at all, even if it was lowly Birmingham University. But even when I came out with my degree, my mother promptly insisted I go straight to secretarial college to have something to fall back on, just in case - which didn't exactly fill me with confidence. — Tamsin Greig

I went to Cambridge University. I took a number of baths - and a degree in English. I worried a lot about girls and what had happened to my bike. Later I became I writer and worked on a lot of things that were almost incredibly successful but in fact just failed to see the light of day. Other writers will know what I mean. — Douglas Adams

I went to university in the north of England at University of Birmingham to do an English literature degree, and I knew I could do extracurricular stuff with theater and drama. I started a theater company, called Article 19, and I did it with a bunch of friends. I wrote and directed plays. I had a radio show. — Tom Riley

I went to study English for two reasons. Principally because when I was in university, studying drama wasn't considered an option. You couldn't get a degree course for it. And so many plays and things that I was interested in landed themselves in a broader spectrum of literature. — James Callis

Angela Carter ... refused to join in rejecting or denouncing fairy tales, but instead embraced the whole stigmatized genre, its stock characters and well-known plots, and with wonderful verve and invention, perverse grace and wicked fun, soaked them in a new fiery liquor that brought them leaping back to life. From her childhood, through her English degree at the University of Bristol where she specialised in Medieval Literature, and her experiences as a young woman on the folk-music circuit in the West Country, Angela Carter was steeped in English and Celtic faerie, in romances of chivalry and the grail, Chaucerian storytelling and Spenserian allegory, and she was to become fairy tale's rescuer, the form's own knight errant, who seized hold of it in its moribund state and plunged it into the fontaine de jouvence itself.
(from "Chamber of Secrets: The Sorcery of Angela Carter") — Marina Warner

Control is illusory. No matter what university you go to, no matter what degree you hold, if your goal is to becomes master of your own destiny, you have more to learn. — Michael J. Fox

I got my degree in theatre at a little school in Pennsylvania, Bloomsburg University. It was one of those situations where I went into the major because I loved it, but didn't really expect to see it as a moneymaking situation or career. — Jimmi Simpson

I thought I would make it (to the NBA). I believed that I would make it. But I had a Plan B. I was going to get my Master's degree at Tulane University had it not worked out. I think the pressure of making it wasn't on me as great as some other players that had no other options. I was going to do something special in life and I wanted to play in the NBA. I had a backup plan but I went full speed ahead with my Plan A. — Avery Johnson

When I was in high school, and even to a degree while I was in university, I wasn't on the Internet. So it's not as embedded in my soul, that kind of way of being. — Sheila Heti

At the same time we overlap, because, I do linguistics, and Ben did a first degree in Linguistics at Lancaster University, so he knows some of my subject. — David Crystal

For example, I loved English and history at school. I would have loved to have done a degree in either. But my Mom said I didn't have time for university. — Vanessa Mae

I want to fight, Becky. Can you understand that? I want struggle, I want danger. You know, Sally said something to me once: we were talking about happiness and what that might mean. She said she didn't want to be /happy/, that was a weak, passive sort of thing; she wanted to be alive and active. She wanted /work/. That's the spirit I like. That's what I want; and my work is a rough dirty dangerous kind of work. Oh, I want other things too. I want to write a play and see Henry Irving perform in it. I want to swank about town smoking Havanas and have supper with pretty girls in the Cafe Royal. I want to play poker on a Mississippi riverboat. I want to see Dan Goldberg get into Parliament. I want to see you go to university and get a first-class degree. Sally ... Sally can do anything we wants, by me. There's a whole world I want, Becky. — Philip Pullman

If there was a university degree for greed, you cunts would all get first-class honours. — Paul Keating

They went to university because someone, at a time when universities seemed important, said that in order to rise in the world, you had to have a degree. And thus the world was deprived of some excellent gardeners, bakers, antique dealers, sculptors, and writers. — Paulo Coelho

The daughter of Lithuanian immigrants, born with a precocious scientific intellect and a thirst for chemical knowledge, Elion had completed a master's degree in chemistry from New York University in 1941 while teaching high school science during the day and preforming her research for her thesis at night and on the weekends. Although highly qualified, talented, and driven, she had been unable to find a job in an academic laboratory. Frustrated by repeated rejections, she had found a position as a supermarket product supervisor. When Hitchings found Trudy Elion, who would soon become on of the most innovative synthetic chemists of her generation (and a future Nobel laureate), she was working for a food lab in New York, testing the acidity of pickles and the color of egg yolk going into mayonnaise. Rescued from a life of pickles and mayonnaise ... — Siddhartha Mukherjee

He got his driver's license, he got his high school diploma, he got his university degree. He got a worried little furrow between his eyes. He did what he thought was expected of him, and brought the official pieces of paper home to her like a cat bringing dead mice. Now it's as if he's given up because he doesn't know what else to bring; he's run out of ideas. — Margaret Atwood

Education is political. — Noel Castree

Going to university is only one avenue to gain knowledge. There are others. A degree isn't insurance against ignorance. — Julie Garwood

I graduated from university with a degree in architecture and then ended up doing a series of internships with different firms. And once I was in an office environment, I realized that at school what I was doing was 98 percent creative, 2 percent makework, but in the real world, it was the other way around. — Daniel Wu

Herbalife: the customers are fictitious, the business opportunity is a scam, the university degree is a fraud. — Bill Ackman

Chesler cites the claim by the Palestinian American writer Suha Sabbagh that Western feminists, simply by writing about Muslim women, exert "a greater degree of domination" over those women "than that actually exercised by men over women within Muslim culture." A brown woman in (say) some Pakistani village, then, is actually more oppressed by some white woman tapping away at a computer at some American university she's never heard of than by a man who's beating and raping her in her home. — Bruce Bawer

I beg your pardon?" Catherine interrupted. "Are you implying that women have poor judgment?"
"In these matters, yes." Leo gestured to Christopher. "Just look at the fellow, standing there like a bloody Greek god. Do you think she chose him because of his intellect?"
"I graduated from Cambridge," Christopher said acidly. "Should I have brought my diploma?"
"In this family," Cam interrupted, "there is no requirement of a university degree to prove one's intelligence. Lord Ramsay is a perfect example of how one has nothing to do with the other. — Lisa Kleypas

His name was Ed. His nickname was Scrambled Ed. On leaving school he had taken a year out to decide what he wanted to study at University. The year passed and he still hadn't decided but went to University anyway.

'Academic' is defined as 'of, or relating to, institutionalized education and scholarship'. The same word, at the same time, also means 'having little practical use or value, as by being overly detailed, unengaging or theoretical'.
The latter definition seemed the most appropriate for Ed's university career which was a mash up of drinking, diving, surfing, kayaking and having his heart-broken. All washed down with a few pints.
After three years of that he was awarded a second class joint honours degree which he put in the recycling bin and went in search of something that would make him feel better. — Matt Padwick

I wouldn't consider myself an outsider artist because I have a university degree in painting. — Marcel Dzama

I'm not a prophet. I'm not a teacher. I have no degrees. My degree is from the University of Life. — Jamie Lee Curtis

It's all about control. Control is illusory. No matter what university you go to, no matter what degree you hold, if your goal is to become master of your own destiny, you have more to learn. Parkinson's is a perfect metaphor for lack of control. Every unwanted movement in my hand or arm, every twitch that I cannot anticipate or arrest, is a reminder that even in the domain of my own being, I am not calling the shots. I tried to exert control by drinking myself to a place of indifference, which just exacerbated the sense of miserable hopelessness. — Michael J. Fox

The idea that the majority of students attend a university for an education independent of the degree and grades is a hypocrisy everyone is happier not to expose. Occasionally some students do arrive for an education but rote and mechanical nature of the institution soon converts them to a less idealic attitude — Robert M. Pirsig

I went to the Westminster College for Men in Missouri, which is what it was called back then, and transferred to the University of Denver where I ultimately got my degree. — Ted Shackelford

It's the typical mid-life crisis kind of thing, where you just stop and wonder, 'Should I go back to university and get a law degree?' I kind of looked around me and thought, 'What kind of idiot am I that I've just spent the last 10 years writing novels? Financially, I'm pretty much where I was when I was 28.' — Lynn Coady

Peter Thiel, one of the founders of PayPal, has launched a movement to convince people to not go to college.3 It's a waste of money. The return on investment isn't there anymore. School has gotten too expensive. . . If writing [computer] code is your deal and you're able to go to a trade school that enables you to write code, that's far better than a computer science degree from a four-year college or university that looks great on paper, but doesn't give you the skills you need when you graduate. — John Dearie

I'm not terribly intelligent - I have no university degree, you know. — Rosamunde Pilcher

An understanding of ordinary logic is no longer a required part of university degree programs, as was almost universally the case sixty years ago. Now, as a result, our world is full of uneducated people with higher degrees. They — Dallas Willard

In his later life Mark Twain was accorded high academic honors. Already, in 1888, he had received from Yale College the degree of Master of Arts, and the same college made him a Doctor of Literature in 1901. A year later the university of his own State, at Columbia, Missouri, conferred the same degree, and then, in 1907, came the crowning honor, when venerable Oxford tendered him the doctor's robe. "I don't know why they should give me a degree like that," he said, quaintly. "I never doctored any literature - I wouldn't know how. — Mark Twain

The environmental issues we face today are complex and span many knowledge domains. This undergraduate degree programme in Environmental Studies will nurture a pool of graduates who are able to think deeply and broadly about these issues, and help develop novel solutions for Singapore, Asia and beyond. I am delighted at this programme for another reason - it is the first undergraduate course that draws on expertise from eight Faculties in NUS, making full use of the comprehensive strengths of our University. — Tan Chorh Chuan

I went to college at the University of Kansas, where I got a degree in political science. — Sara Paretsky

In Finland, getting a university degree is the first thing that you expect your kids to do. — Renny Harlin

Wisdom is the most-sought intellectual degree whose subjects are regularly learned throughout life with an open mind in an open university called life and taught by a teacher who is none other than self-experience only. — Anuj

A graduate of Oxford University with a degree in — Philip Pullman

If I was working nine to five, acting would be my hobby ... I always feel like maybe I should do an Open University degree. But I'm never going to. — Claire Foy

Shoot, I must have lived such a doggoned sheltered life as a normal, independent American up there in the Last Frontier, schooled with only public education and a lowly state university degree, because obviously I haven't learned enough to dismiss common sense. — Sarah Palin

In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the army. Having completed my studies there, I was duly attached to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers as Assistant Surgeon. — Arthur Conan Doyle

I majored in theater in college. I did a couple of plays in high school, and I really enjoyed it, so I went to Illinois Wesleyan University and got a degree, and then I went back to Chicago and started doing theater in all the companies around the city for about 11 years before I moved out to L.A. — Kevin Dunn

I'm married to a dear little girl who holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania. — Percy Julian

My grandmother got her law degree from Syracuse University in roughly 1911 and later co-founded with her husband an investment banking firm on Wall Street known as Lebenthal & Co. — H. G. Bissinger

Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud.His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. — Mitt Romney

The University of Google is where I got my degree from. — Jenny McCarthy

I have an Honors Degree in Drama from the University of Alberta, but when it was done I knew a life in modern theatre was not for me. While figuring out what the hell I might do instead of theatre, I spent a couple of days on a horror film doing stunt work. I'd never been behind the camera before, and I loved everything about it. I joined the local film co-op - The Film and Video Arts Society of Alberta - because you could trade skills for experience. These indie filmmakers were making their own stuff their own way, all the time. Instant education. — Karen Walton

Don't be afraid to make an ass of yourself. I do it all the time, and look what I got. (Spoken at a graduation ceremony while holding aloft an honorary doctoral degree from McGill University) — William Shatner

Introducing someone as a "Negro poet with a University degree" or again, quite simply, the expression, "a great black poet." These ready-made phrases, which seem in a common-sense way to fill a need-or have a hidden subtlety, a permanent rub. — Frantz Fanon

I started a French degree at university, but packed it in when I realised I really wanted to be an actor. — James Nesbitt

My husband, a man with a university degree, an engineer, seriously tried to convince me that it was an act of terrorism. An enemy diversion. A lot of people at the time thought that. But I remembered how I'd once been on a train with a man who worked in construction who told me about the building of the Smolensk nuclear plant: how much cement, boards, nails, and sand was stolen from the construction site and sold to neighboring villages. In exchange for money, for a bottle of vodka. People — Svetlana Alexievich

Everyone has a right to a university degree in America, even if it's in Hamburger Technology. — Clive James

My university degree is in art and, yes, I do a lot of drawing for all my books. I have a big drafting table set up in a spare bedroom and I cover it with maps and house plans and sketches that I use in the books. Also, I truly love architecture, so that plays a big part in all my books. — Jude Deveraux

I think my parents were happy that I'd gone to university and gotten a degree in history so they thought, 'Well if acting doesn't work for him, he can always become a history teacher or something.' Fortunately, the acting worked out. — Derek Jacobi

In 1858 I received the degree of D. S. from the Lawrence Scientific School, and thereafter remained on the rolls of the university as a resident graduate. — Simon Newcomb

A degree helps to a degree, but your work is largely what you create it to be. — Ryan Lilly

Nowhere was the complacency of the establishment, with its blind faith in progress, more evident than in its attitude toward an elite degree: as long as my child goes to the right schools, upward mobility will continue. A university education had become the equivalent of a very expensive insurance policy, like owning a gun. — George Packer

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

Never too late. Shooting is prayer. And when civilisation shuts up shop, a gun'll be worth any number of university degrees. — David Mitchell

I graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, with an English literature degree and travelled for a year before going to work. — Natalie Massenet

Robin had presented him with a fake degree from a university in Athens where the puck had an old acquaintance who still got a kick out of teaching, despite hemlock rumors to the contrary. — Rob Thurman

I'm a part-time student, and I plan to finish my degree. I think there are a lot of part-time students with jobs on the side or stressful careers. I'm certainly not the first person to be working while I'm in university. — Sarah Gadon

In my twenties I was in Austin, Texas, finishing up yet another degree. I'd always loved hiking and, sick of the sedentary life of academia, I'd joined the orienteering club at the university. The sport, which originated in Sweden, is a competition in which you use a special map and a compass to navigate through wilderness you've never seen before, stopping at checkpoints to have a control card physically or electronically stamped. The first competitor to hit the "double circle" - the end of the route on the orienteering map - is the winner. I — Jeffery Deaver

I am a native of Taiwan, and I earned my bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from National Taiwan University. I received my master's and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. — Min Kao

I studied at a university in Florence and finished my degree. My mother was very strict about this recipe: You need to get your degree. — Donatella Versace

The knowledge of languages was very useful. I have a university degree in foreign languages and literature. — Emma Bonino