Stephen J. Dubner Quotes

First I was going to be a football player, then after that try to study medicine or engineering. But it was very difficult to do medicine, so I did engineering.

I decided that I didn't want to spend my time in a liberal arts college.

When I graduated from high school, I thought I wanted to make science fiction movies, so I applied to film school, but I couldn't get in. A professor told me I should try architecture instead.

I was in college, and very disappointed. I majored in commercial art and interior design for three or four years. At that time, it seemed the thing I really wanted to do, production design, just wasn't available in the U.K., so I turned to music.

Both of my parents had a change of career. My mum was a nurse, and now she's a college lecturer.

I went to medical school after having decided to do so somewhere between my junior and senior year at Harvard - very late. I initially wanted to be an intellectual historian.

I quit college. I was studying architecture for about a year.

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

My father would not pay for me to study anything but engineering or math in college.

I have a degree in European history, which didn't necessarily have any direct impact on my career, but I'm grateful I studied something other than acting in college.

My personal advice is to go to school first and get a liberal arts education, and then if you want to pursue acting, go to graduate school.

I'd love to go off to college to study photography, art history, humanities.

I got a sociology degree and then had an opportunity to go to graduate school. But I said no, because I wanted to give songwriting a shot.

I was a chemistry major when I first went to college, which turned out to be a huge mistake. When I realized that, I decided to try an early journalism course.

I studied philosophy at Columbia, then dropped out to do drama at the Lee Strasberg Institute.

When I came back to go back to school on my time off from modeling, I went to Palomar.

After Class 10, I kept away from films.

I was doing something of my own after I left The Moody Blues, I went away, lived in Spain for a while.

I didn't want to go to school for more than four years, and I didn't know what you did with a bachelor's in biology. So I switched over and got my degree in communications. I regret it now. It was one of the most idiotic things I ever did.

My dad was a builder, so I didn't have any connection to the arts at all. I never really considered film as a career, but I knew I didn't want to be a builder.

I didn't know whether to join the army or go to art college.

I was good at math and science, and it was expected that I would attend the University of Washington in Seattle and become an engineer. But by the time I was seventeen, I was ready to leave home, a decision my parents agreed to support if I could obtain a scholarship. MIT did not grant me one, but the University of Chicago did.

When I first started out in the industry, I was 12 or whatever, and I wanted to be on something so bad, and I didn't know what I was going to be on. At the time, I was in school, and I was working on drama and theatrical stuff, so I never thought that I'd end up going to comedy.

My family are quite academic, and I was set to study economics and politics at university.

After graduating from high school, I worked at an advertising agency as a designer. After I left, I spent a year doing nothing in particular. At age 23, I drew my first comic.