David Lodge Quotes

I'd always try to get a C, maybe a B. Other girls would trot off a brilliant essay and go off to Oxford; I'd think: 'Where is the justice?' I took A-levels in English, history and theatre studies and got three Bs.

I was one of five very clever kids, the other kids were cleverer than I was and still are and are very achieving. The girls were always first at everything and I was always 101st!

I was probably the first kid in my high school to go to Yale. I applied almost as a lark. Then, when I got there, I was the dumbest person in your class.

Boarding school is a wicked thing.

You have got to pay attention, you have got to study and you have to do your homework. You have to score higher than everybody else. Otherwise, there is always somebody there waiting to take your place.

Going to school and working for good marks, indeed working for very good marks, was a serious business.

You may be in a medical or engineering college, but not all will stand first in class. It depends on who studies the most.

I loved tests because it was another form of competing, a healthy competition.

It is also absolutely necessary that the examinations should be competitive, and the appointments given to those who are most successful. A mere pass examination never, in the long run, does more than exclude absolute dunces.

When I was at Paisley Grammar we were equipped to compete with the private-school kids - and encouraged to do so. The sky was the limit, provided we had ability, ambition and a capacity for hard work.

It's a terrible shame if you're born the brightest guy in your class. If you're not, then you have to hustle-and that's good.

The meek may inherit the earth, but they don't get in to Harvard.

I didn't know about competition until I got to school. I didn't know how degrading it was to be graded until I got to school.

All men are created equal. Some work harder in preseason.

If you're always at the head of the class, then you're in the wrong class.

You will have to learn many tedious things,...which you will forget the moment you have passed your final examination, but in anatomy it is better to have learned and lost than never to have learned at all.

Ability is not always gauged by examination.

In today's world, everything seems like some sort of long audition.

You know, sometimes I'll go to an 8th-grade graduation and there's all that pomp and circumstance and gowns and flowers. And I think to myself, it's just 8th grade ... An 8th-grade education doesn't cut it today. Let's give them a handshake and tell them to get their butts back in the library!

I was valedictorian. Did I enjoy going to school? I hated it. It wasn't a choice on my part, it was expected.

The pressure on kids is high to get good grades. In my time, no one cared about it. My father looked at them but he didn't really make much fuss about them.

It would have been better if I had won, but reaching the final was perfect.

There is no need to suppose that human beings differ very much one from another; but it is true that the ones who come out on top are the ones who have been trained in the hardest school.

So that's little Scorpious. Make sure you beat him in every test, Rosie. Thank god you've inherited your mother's brains.

The one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end.