Ben Carson Quotes

I once asked my father what he wanted me to be. To my horror, he said, 'sociologist.'

I don't know, you know all through high school I just knew I wanted to do it.

Writing was in my mind from the time I was in high school, but more, the idea that I would be a doctor. I really wanted to be a medical doctor, and I had various schemes: one was to be a psychiatrist, another was tropical medicine.

I'm not going to sit here and go to college for something that I don't care about.

I can't remember a time when I didn't want to be a doctor. The doctors I knew as a very young child must have helped to plant the desire in me, when I was as young as five or six. One homeopathic physician, Dr. Justice Gage Wright, was a great model.

I was involved in music, acting, and some running, but my firm wish was to become a doctor. That was the formative age when I had decided on the pattern of my career.

I wanted to be a doctor, but my mom was like, 'It's really hard and it's going to take 10 years,' so I was like 'OK, I'll just be a lawyer'.

The other thing that happened was my last military assignment - this was in the air force; I had enlisted in order to avoid being drafted as a private, and of course I only practiced medicine or psychiatry in the air force so I was never in any kind of violent combat.

I was the only child, and I know my father had certain thoughts about me. He was a lawyer and extremely literary, but he would have been much happier if I had wanted to be a lawyer, a scientist, an engineer. But what I wanted to do was read.

I went to college because my father thought that I should learn engineering, because he wanted to go into the heating business with me. There, I realized I wanted to be a physicist. I had to tell him, which was a somewhat traumatic experience.

I went to college, I went pre-med, I thought I was going to be a doctor.

I thought I'd be a professional rugby player or go to university and get some degree in construction.

I was in the military, and then I went to university to study biology.

I always wanted to be a medical doctor, and I never thought of business.

My mom says I either have to go to college or go into the military.

The family's dream was to see me receive a high degree abroad and to return to become a university professor - on the door to my study room, a sign was placed reading 'Dr. Ahmed,' even though I was still far from becoming a doctor.

So when I got out of the military, I went back to school in biology, and earned a biology degree at the University of Texas, and then did some graduate work in it.

As an undergrad, I studied engineering physics at the University of Oklahoma, and all my degrees are from engineering departments. My father wanted me to join him in the oil-field business in Oklahoma, but I wanted to be a scientist.

I told my father I had to try political science for a year. He thought I was throwing my life away.

I decided I wanted to be a physician when I was seven years old.

The greatest mistake of my life was obtaining a military education.

When I left high school - I was younger than my classmates, just 17 - I knew I wanted to be an actress, but I thought, 'When I go to college, I'd rather study something else.'

I didn't plan on going to college, at least not a full-time schedule. I still have that plan. I may take some individual classes at some point as an indulgence.

I cannot wait until the day I can go back to school... I've already picked my program: anthropology at Columbia. I will not get in, but a girl can dream.

I was part of the generation that was supposed to become doctors.