Michele Bachmann Quotes

My mom and dad both worked when I was little... My mom, her mom died when she was 11, so she had a rough childhood as well. She put herself through college in three years at the University of Texas - while working a job to pay for it.

I come from great stock. I didn't come from money. My parents both worked really hard to keep food on the table and give my sister and me opportunities to play sports and see what we were good at.

My mother's passion for something more, to write a different destiny for a dirt-poor farmer's daughter, was to shape my entire life.

I knew I wanted considerable education so that I wouldn't have to work as hard as my parents.

I wasn't the brightest kid in school. I was a backbencher troubling the frontbencher, and eventually I failed in my 10th grade. But then in higher secondary, there were only three people who got first division in arts, and I was one of them. So this tells you, where you put your mind and heart into, that's where you go.

We were poor. But my mom never accepted that. She worked hard to become a residential contractor - got her master's with honors at the University of New Orleans. I used to go to every class with her. Her father was my paternal figure.

I struggled to get through high school. I didn't get to go to college. But it made me realize you can do anything if you want to bad enough.

When the time came for me to go to college, there was only one scholarship that my high school offered at the time and I didn't win that one, but that didn't stop me. I went on to college anyway. I worked my way through it and paid my student loans for 11 years.

I was unloading sides of beef down on the docks when I decided enough was enough. By then, I'd done a lot of reading on my own, so I persuaded New York University to enroll me.

I try to remember who I am and what I come from, because I didn't come from super means. I had to work and pray and try really hard to succeed and get everything that I wanted out of life.

I never had a single thing handed to me. I had to fight for everything I wanted, like my education.

The fact that I am getting a doctorate in spite of being a college drop-out proves that the world can be your university.

I am a first-generation college graduate, and I'm proud to say that most of my other siblings have college degrees as well. Our parents taught us to work hard and never forget our family roots, where we came from, and how much effort it took to get to where we are today.

I put myself through college.

Every step, whether at high school or at college or at the NFL, I had to climb and crawl and scratch to get there.

I mean, it's the life lessons that I suppose you learn that nobody gets a free ride and that you do the best you can with the means that you can and try to open yourself to as much knowledge and all that that you can.

Beast Mode doesn't make excuses. It doesn't complain. Whatever you're doing, go out there and get it done. Keep pushing. If I have a bad game, I think about what I have to do to return to form. Figure it out, go to sleep, and wake up a new man.

I wanted to acquire an education, work extremely hard and never deviate from my goal, to make it.

In Britain, the idea one could go from blue-collar beginnings to the university was so far out, it was quite unthinkable. I took a variety of jobs to pay for tuition - from ice-cream salesman to night-club bouncer. Whatever earned the most money in the least time.

I always hustled to make money and pay for school. I was never afraid of hard work.

My advice to an aspiring actor would be to never stop learning or working for what you want. Nothing comes easy, ever, if you want something, you have to work for it. By working for it I mean work on your craft, learn from people who have something to teach. It's just like anything else, practice makes perfect.

It was an honor and privilege to arrive to this country 16 years ago with almost no money in my pocket. A lot has happened since then.

I was not naturally talented. I didn't sing, dance or act, though working around that minor detail made me inventive.

I'll always use the negativity as more motivation to work even harder and become even stronger.

Gerald Boyd was a classic specimen of the self-made man. Born poor, he worked and studied his way up out of poverty under the guidance of his widowed grandmother.