Grammar School Quotes

• I can assure you that there is no question of us throwing away the tradition of the Grammar Schools.

  Hugh Gaitskell

  Education, School, Tradition

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• In grammar school, I went to eight o'clock mass pretty much like four days a week.

  Patricia Mauceri

  School, Eight, Four

  Source: www.beliefnet.com

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• In grammar school they taught me that a frog turning into a prince was a fairy tale. In the university they taught me that a frog turning into a prince was a fact!

  Ron Carlson

  School, Frogs, Taught

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• People from my sort of background needed Grammar schools to compete with children from privileged homes like Shirley Williams and Anthony Wedgwood Benn.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Children, Home, School

  "Confrontation with reality". Margaret Thatcher's speech to the Conservative Party Conference at Winter Gardens, Blackpool, www.margaretthatcher.org. October 14, 1977.

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• Like most kids, I grew up singing 'This Land Is Your Land' in grammar school, but with the most radical verses neatly removed. This was before I knew it was a Woody Guthrie song.

  Steve Earle

  Song, School, Kids

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• Growing up in the Boroughs, I thought I must be the cleverest boy in the world, an illusion that I was able to maintain until I got to the grammar school.

  Alan Moore

  Growing Up, School, Boys

  "Alan Moore: why I turned my back on Hollywood". Interview with Tom Lamont, www.theguardian.com. December 15, 2012.

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• Grammar school never taught me anything about grammar.

  Isaac Goldberg

  School, Taught, Grammar

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• There's no reason why you can't deliver a grammar-school curriculum to an all-ability intake.

  Toby Young

  School, Curriculum, Reason Why

  "Can Toby Young's free school succeed?". Interview with Peter Wilby, www.theguardian.com. April 5, 2011.

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• Ever since grammar school, I knew I wanted to be famous - I always wanted to be a singer.

  Jennifer Hudson

  School, Singers, Grammar

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• Grammar schools are public schools without the sodomy.

  Tony Parsons

  School, Grammar, Public School

  "Man and Boy". Book by Tony Parsons, www.huffingtonpost.com. 1999.

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• The opening of the first grammar school was the opening of the first trench against monopoly in Church and State.

  James Russell Lowell

  Education, School, Church

  James Russell Lowell (1870). “Among my Books, etc”, p.242

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• I credit that eight years of grammar school with nourishing me in a direction where I could trust myself and trust my instincts. They gave me the tools to reject my faith. They taught me to question and think for myself and to believe in my instincts to such an extent that I just said, "This is a wonderful fairy tale they have going here, but it's not for me."

  George Carlin

  Believe, School, Thinking

  "The New York Times", August 20, 1995.

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• At age 11 in 1960, I moved to an academic state secondary school, Harrow County Grammar School for Boys.

  Paul Nurse

  School, Boys, Age

  Autobiography by Paul Nurse, www.nobelprize.org. 2001.

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• I studied at a grammar school and later at the University of Vienna in the Faculty of Medicine.

  Karl von Frisch

  School, Medicine, Vienna

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• As a former high school teacher and a student in a class of 60 urchins at St. Brigid's grammar school, I know that education is all about discipline and motivation. Disadvantaged students need extra attention, a stable school environment, and enough teacher creativity to stimulate their imaginations. Those things are not expensive.

  Bill O'Reilly

  Teacher, Motivation, Creativity

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• My whole life as a grammar-school boy, getting to Cambridge University and working on the 'London Sunday Times' has been very aspirational.

  Robert Lacey

  School, Sunday, Boys

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• I went to a very militantly Republican grammar school and, under its influence, began to revolt against the Establishment, on thesimple rule of thumb, highly satisfying to a ten-year-old, that Irish equals good, English equals bad.

  Bernadette Devlin

  School, Years, Thumbs

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• I think the prospect of bringing back grammar schools has always been wrong and I've never supported it. And I don't think any Conservative government would have done it.

  David Cameron

  School, Thinking, Government

  "Sunday AM" on BBC, January 15, 2006.

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• I remember when I was young, in the north, they went to the grammar school little children: they came from thence great lubbers: always learning, and little profiting: learning without book everything, understanding within the book little or nothing.

  Roger Ascham

  Education, Children, Book

  Roger Ascham (1815). “The English Works of Roger Ascham: Preceptor to Queen Elizabeth”, p.254

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• My father was an autodidact. It wasn't a middle-class house. Shopkeepers are aspirant. He paid for me to go to private school. He was denied an education - he had a horrible childhood. He got a place at a grammar school and wasn't allowed to go.

  Kate Atkinson

  Father, School, Class

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• I was put to the grammar-school at eight years of age, my father intending to devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the service of the Church.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Father, School, Son

  Source: www.foundingfatherquotes.com

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• All the arguments there are against Malcolm [Turnbull] - and there are many - the one thing in which he is impeccable and why I would support him in this is that he has an absolutely impeccable record on the question of colour and race. People often wondered why. What I see as a possible explanation is [that] he came from a very wealthy family - a 'squattocracy' - and he had private education at home and then he went to boarding school at Melbourne Grammar School, one of those lead schools in Australia.

  Bob Hawke

  Home, School, Race

  Source: www.commonwealthoralhistories.org

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• I remember in grammar school the teacher asked if anyone had any hobbies. I was the only one with any hobbies and I had every hobby there was... name anything, no matter how esoteric. I could have given everyone a hobby and still had 40 or 50 to take home.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Teacher, Children, Home

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• Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school.

  William Shakespeare

  School, Youth, Grammar

  'Henry VI, Part 2' (1592) act 4, sc. 7, l. [35]

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• It would also have been helpful to have gone to a Catholic grammar school. The only people who know grammar are those people who went to Catholic grammar school. Those nuns beat it into them.

  Fran Lebowitz

  School, People, Catholic

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