Ben Carson Quotes

When I was a child I didn't care about getting an education, and I didn't finish high school.

When I started to see that I had two or three pair of shoes to wear to school and I had multiple pants, my mental health started getting stronger. I could focus on school, and my grades started to go up. I was eating, so I could focus on other things rather than being hungry, that's when I really started to excel. I started to create that path because I didn't have the small things to worry about and it all came from help. It all came from help from other people and other resources and without that, I wouldn't be here.

I want to help establish opportunities for at-risk kids to have the same opportunities in and outside of the classroom as everyone else.

My father's side of the family was very active in education.

I was asked why I did not give a rod with which to fish, in the hands of the poor, rather than give the fish itself as this makes them remain poor. So I told them: The people whom we pick up are not able to stand with a rod. So today I will give them fish and when they are able to stand, then I shall send them to you and you can give them the rod. That is your job. Let me do my work today.

Today, 8 million adult Americans, more than the entire population of Michigan, have not finished 5 years of school. Nearly 20 million have not finished 8 years of school. Nearly 54 million - more than one-quarter of all America - have not even finished high school.

Every child has a right to go to high school and end up with a third grade education.

Some parents expend great efforts to get their kids into the right nursery school or the right preschool, with the thought that that will set them on the path to success, to competitive success especially.

If you're planning on dropping out of high school, prepare yourself for the future by repeating aloud each day: 'I'm looking forward to low-paying jobs for the rest of my life.'

The job of the school is to teach so well that family background is no longer an issue.

It should be obvious that I wasn't no honor roll student in high school. My favorite class was boys.

I believe that education offers the fastest route to economic mobility. I grew up with a family of strong, accomplished, and educated women. I believe, as they say, that you can't be what you don't see, and since I saw a lot of smart women in my life, education being at the center, I just mimicked that behavior. There was never a question that I'd go to college. In fact, I was the last person in my family to get a master's degree, so that tells you I'm actually the underachiever!

Like many others, I have deep misgivings about the state of education in the United States. Too many of our students fail to graduate from high school with the basic skills they will need to succeed in the 21st Century economy, much less prepared for the rigors of college and career. Although our top universities continue to rank among the best in the world, too few American students are pursuing degrees in science and technology. Compounding this problem is our failure to provide sufficient training for those already in the workforce.

I will use the rest of my life to help the poor overcome the problems confronting them - poverty is the greatest challenge facing humanity. That is why I build schools; I want to free people from poverty and illiteracy.

If the goal is to dramatically improve college completion rates, not college-going rates by itself but college completion, it's not just a college problem. We need a big focus on early childhood education. Our early childhood education system is pretty good in this country. Not enough students have opportunity. And, very discouragingly, they lose their advantage because they go to poor schools after that. So, let's focus on our babies.

If you want to prevent abortions, you make sure everyone has health care, a high school education and birth control. Not the exact opposite.

Although my Dad was a talented calligrapher and both of my younger brothers were successful, I was the first one in my family to graduate from high school.

A little learning is a dangerous thing. I must say that Rush Limbaugh is increasingly becoming a warning to kids of the perils of dropping out of school.

Anticipate charity by preventing poverty; assist the reduced fellow man, either by a considerable gift or a sum of money or by teaching him a trade or by putting him in the way of business so that he may earn an honest livelihood and not be forced to the dreadful alternative of holding out his hand for charity. This is the highest step and summit of charity's golden ladder.

Most of my friends from Columbia are going on to get advanced degrees. And why not? A Ph.D. is the new M.A., a master's is the new bachelor's, a B.A. is the new high school diploma, and a high school diploma is the new smiley-face sticker on your first-grade spelling test.

When you quit school at an early age, I think you have a lifelong need to show the world - and maybe yourself - that you're really smart after all.

The notion that college education is a cost-effective way to help poor, low-skill, unmarried mothers with high school diplomas or GEDs move up the economic ladder is just wrong.

The poverty rate among black married couples has been in single digits ever since 1994. You would never learn that from most of the media. Similarly you look at those blacks that have gone on to college or finished college, the incarceration rate is some tiny fraction of what it is among those blacks who have dropped out of high school. So it’s not being black; it’s a way of life. Unfortunately, the way of life is being celebrated not only in rap music, but among the intelligentsia, is a way of life that leads to a lot of very big problems for most people.

Harvard students have completed more English courses and less forward passes than any school in this generation.

She had observed that the more education they got, the less they could do. Their father had gone to a one-room schoolhouse through the eighth grade and he could do anything.