Norman Foster Quotes

There is no greater ladder into the middle class than education.

When my parents met, my mother was a waitress and my father was a dockyard worker. They were part of that post-war better-yourself generation, so they both went to night school.

College education is the engine of social mobility in this country.

I broke the cycle of poverty thanks to education.

I went out to California; I was pursuing my degree in genetic engineering and civil law at U.C. Berkeley, and I had to pay my way through school. I eventually got a scholarship, which was great, but in the beginning, it was very hard.

John Edwards comes from working folk, just like me. John Edwards worked hard and excelled to get his education, just like me.

And that had a powerful appeal, particularly to those who had been denied the choice to stay on at school, to go to university, to be something else, other than going down the pit.

The best escalator to opportunity in America is education.

I went to a public high school, and after graduation, college wasn't really much of an option for me. I didn't believe I had the money or the grades at the time, so I continued to work and save money to support my acting career.

They made it to the middle class, my dad working as a bartender and my mother as a cashier and a maid. I didn't inherit any money from them. But I inherited something far better - the real opportunity to accomplish my dreams.

My mother taught public school, went to Harvard and then got her master's there and taught fifth and sixth grade in a public school. My dad had a more working-class lifestyle. He didn't go to college. He was an auto mechanic and a bartender and a janitor at Harvard.

I like school very much, and I'll go to college if my career slows down. But kids go to college to be where I am today. Not to put college down, but for me, it would be digressing.

I believe that it is higher education's purpose and calling to keep open the door to the American dream.

Community colleges provide higher education where people live, helping to build strong ladders of opportunity that allow people to secure a foothold in the middle class.

In America today, a young person needs more education after high school just to have a chance to make it in the middle class. Not a guarantee, just a chance to make it.

I was the first and only person in my family to go to university, and I spent two decades redesigning myself: even my voice is the product of elocution lessons.

These institutions are generally more skilled at getting rich off those living in the lower economic reaches than they are in preparing them for the job market.

My dad got a job as a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. He teaches biology and genetics. My dad has been obsessed with science his whole life. Both my paternal grandparents were illiterate bamboo farmers, so he really worked his way up and then got a Ph.D., full ride and everything, from universities in America.

For generations of Hong Kongers, the only means of upward mobility and the only way to meaningfully contribute to society have been to obtain a respectable university degree (preferably in business administration) and a professional accreditation (in finance, accounting, law or medicine).

Where I'm from, you focus on finishing school. Even finishing college is seen as a stretch - you just get a job after school, and that's it.

I want to finish high school, but that will be it.

I was the only kid out of six of us to go to college, primarily because my parents could not afford it.

The childhood poverty of both my parents and their minimal education did much to influence me and my two younger brothers in our education and career choices. One brother became a dentist and the other, a professor of anthropology with a Ph.D. degree.

I don't want to scrounge around and be homeless, and I want to finish my education.

I hated school. After 15, you went off to college if you were good enough. It didn't appeal to me so I left school. I did what everybody did - get a job.