Herbert Gerjuoy

I grew up in a working-class neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago where most folks, including my parents, didn’t have college degrees. But with a lot of hard work – and a lot of financial aid – I had the chance to attend Princeton and Harvard Law School, and that gave me the confidence to pursue my ambitions.

[On his donation of $100 million to UCLA in 2012 adding to the $200 million he donated in 2002] The cost of a world-class medical education should not deter our future innovators, doctors and scientists from the path they hope to pursue. We need the students at this world-class institution to be driven by determination and the desire to do their best work and not by the fear of crushing debt. I hope in doing this that others will be inspired to do the same.

I went to college on an art scholarship at the American Academy of Art, but the education comes from being passionate about objects, spaces, colors and the way they affect your senses.

Learn something new every day.

Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your shoes.

… because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they chose to go to college.

Education… has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.

You are your own teacher. Investigate yourself to find the truth – inside, not outside. Knowing yourself is most important.

The Supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things – the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit.

No task before our nation is more important than expanding and improving the educational opportunities of all our people. The concept that every American deserves the opportunity to attain the highest level of education of which he is capable is not new to this Administration – it is a traditional ideal of democracy. But it is time that we moved toward the fulfillment of this ideal with more vigor and less delay. For education is both the foundation and the unifying force of our democratic way of life – it is the mainspring of our economic and social progress – it is the highest expression of achievement in our society, ennobling and enriching human life. In short, it is at the same time the most profitable investment society can make and the richest reward it can offer.

If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the highest return.

Many of my students don’t know that I’m second lady of the United States… because, you know, it’s a community college.

Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.

What is life but education, anyway?

College is part of the American Dream. It shouldn’t be part of a financial nightmare for families.