198 College Quotes to help you fall in love with college

We know that college is a big decision, but it’s also an exciting one. Whether you’re starting next fall or one year from now, we want to help you get ready for what lies ahead in your life. Let us tell you about the best things about being a college student and provide some inspirational college quotes to motivate and inspire you.

The anticipation of the new experiences to come is one of the best feelings in the world. We’ve got some inspirational college quotes that will inspire you for all your future endeavours, so check them out!

We know college can be an overwhelming prospect with a lot of uncertainty. But it’s also full of excitement and joy as we prepare ourselves for what lies ahead – whether next fall or one year from now, we’re here to help make sure you have everything ready when this opportunity comes knocking on our doorsteps!

College is a life-changing decision that can be both exciting and scary. Whether you’re starting next fall or one year from now, we want to help prepare for what lies ahead in your future as an undergraduate student. Let us tell you about the best things about being a college student, like getting involved with extracurriculars, trying new experiences outside of classrooms, making friends who’ll have similar interests later on in their careers and lives. Quotes by notable alumni will inspire our readers to work hard towards fulfilling their own goals!

Quotes about college life

• “Every person you meet knows something you don’t; learn from them.” —H Jackson Brown Jr.

• “Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.” — Judy Garland
• “Do not worry too much about your lawn. You will soon find, if you haven’t already, that almost every adult American devotes tremendous time and money to the maintenance of an invasive plant species called turf grass that we can’t eat. I encourage you to choose better obsessions.”- John Green to Butler University in
• “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” —Dr. Seuss
• “Education is something we have to keep pursuing day after day.” — Premier Brian Gallant

Motivational college quotes

• “Everything’s always ending. But everything’s always beginning, too.” — Patrick Ness

• “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” — Vincent Van Gogh
• “If you don’t go after what you want, you’ll never have it. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. If you don’t step forward, you’re always in the same place.” – Nora Roberts
• “I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.” – Jim Carrey
• “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” – E.E. Cummings
• “Just remember, you can’t climb the ladder of success with your hands in your pockets.” – Arnold Schwarzenegger
• “Life is an improvisation. You have no idea what’s going to happen next and you are mostly just making things up as you go along. – Stephen Colbert
• “Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world right in the eye.” – Helen Keller
• “No, sky is not the limit. It is only the beginning.” — Donovan Livingston
• “Now that you’ve graduated, just remember: Bosses don’t usually accept notes from your mother.” – Melanie White
• “Remember, when it comes to applying for jobs, books ARE judged by their cover!” Patricia Akins

College quotes for students

• “So long as your desire to explore is greater than your desire to not screw up, you’re on the right track.” – Ed Helms

• “Struggling to decide what to do after graduation is, and always will be, a sort of rite of passage to the next phase of your life.” Gloria Davidson
• “The best way to predict your future is to create it.” – Abraham Lincoln
• “The fireworks begin today. Each diploma is a lighted match, each one of you is a fuse.” — Ed Koch
• “The noblest question in the world is: What good may I do in it?” — Benjamin Franklin
• “The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.” – Vidal Sassoon
• “There is no passion to be found in playing small, in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living. —Nelson Mandela
• “The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking spaces.” – Will Rogers
• “To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream, not only plan, but also believe.” — Anatole France
• “Whatever you are, be a good one.”– Abraham Lincoln
• “You get in life what you have the courage to ask for.” —Oprah Winfrey

College quotes inspirational

• “You may never know what results come of your action, but if you do nothing there will be no result.” — Mahatma Ghandi

• “You will find the key to success under the alarm clock.” – Benjamin Franklin
• “You will never have more energy or enthusiasm, hair, or brain cells than you have today.” – Tom & Ray Magliozzi
• “You’re going to fall down, but the world doesn’t care how many times you fall down, as long as it’s one fewer than the numbers of times you get back up.” – Aaron Sorkin
• Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
• A college education shows a man how little other people know. ~Thomas Chandler Haliburton
• Always hold your head up, but be careful to keep your nose at a friendly level. ~Max L. Forman
• A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad. ~Theodore Roosevelt
• A professor is one who talks in someone else’s sleep. ~W.H. Auden
• As long as there are tests, there will be prayer in schools. ~Author Unknown
• A university is a college with a stadium seating over 40,000. ~Leonard L. Levinson

best college quotes

• A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds. ~Francis Bacon, Essays, 1625

• College is a place to keep warm between high school and an early marriage. ~George Gobel
• College is the best time of your life. When else are your parents going to spend several thousand dollars a year just for you to go to a strange town and get drunk every night? ~David Wood
• Don’t aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally. ~David Frost
• Don’t find fault. Find a remedy. ~Henry Ford
• Don’t live down to expectations. Go out there and do something remarkable. ~Wendy Wasserstein
• Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. ~Theodore Roosevelt
• Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can be taught. ~Oscar Wilde, “The Critic as Artist,” 1890
• Excellence is not a skill. It is an attitude. ~Ralph Marston
• Hitch your wagon to a star. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
• If at first you don’t succeed, do it like your mother told you. ~Author Unknown

Famous quotes about college

• If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door. ~Milton Berle

• If you feel that you have both feet planted on level ground, then the university has failed you. ~Robert Goheen, Time, 23 June 1961
• I learned three important things in college – to use a library, to memorize quickly and visually, to drop asleep at any time given a horizontal surface and fifteen minutes. ~Agnes DeMille, Dance to the Piper, 1952
• Inspirational Quotes for College Students
• It takes most men five years to recover from a college education, and to learn that poetry is as vital to thinking as knowledge. ~Brooks Atkinson, Once Around the Sun, 1951
• Learn as much as you can while you are young, since life becomes too busy later. ~Dana Stewart Scott
• Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere. ~Chinese Proverb
• Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal. ~Henry Ford
• Of course there’s a lot of knowledge in universities: the freshmen bring a little in; the seniors don’t take much away, so knowledge sort of accumulates. ~Abbott Lawrence Lowell
• Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. ~Thomas Edison
• Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars. ~Les Brown

Quotes about college life

• The best helping hand that you will ever receive is the one at the end of your own arm. ~Fred Dehner

• The important thing is not to stop questioning. ~Albert Einstein
• The purpose of primary education is the development of your weak characteristics; the purpose of university education, the development of your strong. ~Nevin Fenneman
• There isn’t a child who hasn’t gone out into the brave new world who eventually doesn’t return to the old homestead carrying a bundle of dirty clothes. ~Art Buchwald
• There is no telling how many miles you will have to run while chasing a dream. ~Author Unknown
• The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet. ~Aristotle
• The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man’s foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher. ~Thomas Henry Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Huxley
• Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value. ~Albert Einstein
• What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
• What we are is God’s gift to us. What we become is our gift to God. ~Eleanor Powell
• When solving problems, dig at the roots instead of just hacking at the leaves. ~Anthony J. D’Angelo, The College Blue Book

College quotes for instagram

• Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine. ~Anthony J. D’Angelo, The College Blue Book

• Where we love is home, Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Homesick in Heaven
• Whether you think you can or think you can’t – you are right. ~Henry Ford
• You’ve got a lot of choices. If getting out of bed in the morning is a chore and you’re not smiling on a regular basis, try another choice. ~Steven D. Woodhull
• You learn something every day if you pay attention. ~Ray LeBlond
• ‘The best way to gain self-confidence is to do what you are afraid to do.” – Swati Sharma
• “Accept failure as part of the process.” – Unknown
• “A college boy cannot successfully go through life by graduating in football, baseball, or highballs, for the responsibilities of life are not ball-bearing.” -William H. Murray
• “A college degree is not a sign of a finished product but an indication a person is prepared for life.” -Reverend Edward A. Malloy
• “A college education should equip one to entertain three things: a friend, an idea and oneself.” -Thomas Ehrlich
• “A little progress each day adds up to big results.” – Satya Nani
• “All progress takes place outside of your comfort zone.”– Michael John Bobak
• “A mind is a fire to be kindled, not a vessel to be filled.” -Plutarch
• “And will you succeed? Yes you will indeed! (98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed).” -Dr. Seuss
• “An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.” -Benjamin Franklin
• “A year from now…we’ll see who was really working.” – Unknown
• “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” – Steve Martin
• “By making college unaffordable and student loans unbearable, we risk deterring our best and brightest from pursuing higher education and securing a good-paying job.” -Mark Pocan
• “College ain’t so much where you been as how you talk when you get back.” -Ossie Davis
• “College campuses were once a hotbed of political activity.” -Tom Ford
• “College has given me the confidence I need to fail.” -Jarod Kintz

Best college time quotes

• “College inspired me to think differently. It’s like no other time in your life.” -Lara Oleynik

• “College is a refuge from hasty judgment. ” -Robert Frost
• “College is fun as long as you don’t die.” -Tsugumi Ohba
• “College is like a fountain of knowledge and the students are there to drink.” -Chuck Palahniuk
• “College isn’t in everyone’s hearts. I am living proof, though, that school doesn’t mess up your plans. It gives you more experiences to write about.” -Cole
• “College isn’t the place to go for ideas.” –Helen Keller
• “College is the reward for surviving high school. Most people have great fun stories from college and nightmare stories from high school.” -Judd Apatow
• “Colleges are like old-age homes, except for the fact that more people die in colleges.” -Bob Dylan
• “Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.” -R.S. Ingersoll
• “Colleges don’t make fools, they only develop them.” -George Lorimer
• “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying ‘I will try again tomorrow’.”– Mary Anne Radmacher
• “Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement.” – W. Clement Stone
• “Determination is doing what needs to be done even when you don’t feel like doing it.” – unknown
• “Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow.” – Anthony J. D’Angelo
• “Discipline is just choosing between what you want now and what you want most.” – Abraham Lincoln
• “Don’t ever dare to take your college as a matter of course – because, like democracy and freedom, many people you’ll never know have broken their hearts to get it for you.” -Alice Duer Miller
• “Don’t try to be perfect. Just try to be better than you were yesterday.” – unknown
• “Do something now; your future self will thank you for later.” – unknown
• “Educating yourself does not mean you were stupid in the first place, it means that you are intelligent enough to know that there is plenty left to learn.” -Melanie Joy
• “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” – William Butler Yeats
• “Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.” – Malcolm X

Quotes about college experience

• “Education is the best provision for life’s journey.” -Aristotle

• “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” – Nelson Mandela
• “Even the greatest were beginners. Don’t be afraid to take that first step.” – unknown
• “Every expert was once a beginner.” – Helen Hayes
• “Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.” – George Addair
• “Every year, many, many stupid people graduate from college. And if they can do it, so can you.” -John Green
• “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again. This time more intelligently.” – Henry Ford
• “Fall seven times, stand up eight.” – Japanese Proverb
• “Fathers send their sons to college either because they went to college or because they didn’t.” -L. Henderson
• “Focus on doing the right things instead of a bunch of things.” – Mike Krieger
• “Focus on your goal. Don’t look in any direction but ahead.” -unknown
• “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” – Henry David Thoreau
• “Grind while they sleep. Learn while they party. Live like they dream.” – Unknown
• “Hustle until you no longer have to introduce yourself.” – Unknown
• “I accidentally forgot to graduate from college.” -Anne Lamott
• “If the college you visit has a bookstore filled with t-shirts rather than books, find another college. ” -Albert Mohler Jr.
• “If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.” – Jim Rohn
• “If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” – Vincent Van Gogh
• “I think, especially when you’re in college, each book that you’re reading tends to tell you who you are.” -Jeffrey Eugenides
• “I think a college education is important no matter what you do in life.” -Phil Mickelson
• “It never gets easier. You just get better.” – Jordan Hoechlin

Quote about college

• “It’s not about having time. It’s about making time.” – unknown

• “It’s not about perfect. It’s about effort.” – Jillian Michaels
• “I’m going to college. I don’t care if it ruins my career. I’d rather be smart than a movie star.” -Natalie Portman
• “Keep going. Everything you need will come to you at the perfect time.” – unknown
• “Losers quit when they’re tired. Winners quit when they’ve won.”
• “Make the most of yourself….for that is all there is of you.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “Never get married in college; it’s hard to get a start if a prospective employer finds you’ve already made one mistake.” -Elbert Hubbard
• “No period of my life has been one of such unmixed happiness as the four years which have been spent within college walls.” -Horatio Alger
• “Not all hustle is loud. Sometimes hustle is just you, all alone, grinding, while no one hears a sound.” – Unknown
• “One of the benefits of a college education is to show the boy its little avail.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “One of the great mind destroyers of college education is the belief that if it’s very complex, it’s very profound.” -Dennis Prager
• “Opportunities don’t happen. You create them.” – Chris Grosser
• “Our colleges ought to have lit up in us a lasting relish for he better kind of man, a loss of appetite for mediocrities.” -William James
• “Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.” – Newt Gingrich
• “Push yourself because no one else is going to do it.” – Unknown
• “Self-discipline is the magic power that makes you virtually unstoppable.” – Dan Kennedy
• “Set a goal so big that you can’t achieve it until you grow into the person who can.”
• “Skill is only developed by hours and hours of work.” – Usain Bolt
• “So if a college education is indispensable, the challenge as I see it is how to make it more accessible.” -Gordon Gee
• “Stop doubting yourself. Work hard and make it happen.” – Unknown
• “Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest when you haven’t planted.” – David Bly

Quotes for colleges

• “Success doesn’t just come and find you, you have to go out and get it.” – Unknown

• “Successful people are not gifted; they just work hard, then succeed on purpose.”
• “Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.” – Pele
• “Success is the sum of small efforts repeated day-in and day-out.” – Robert Collier
• “Success is what comes after you stop making excuses.” – Luis Galarza
• “Take it all one day at a time and enjoy the journey.” -Kristi Barlett
• “Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself.” – Chinese proverb
• “That’s what college is for – getting as many bad decisions as possible out of the way before you’re forced into the real world. I keep a checklist of ’em on the wall in my room.” -Jeph Jacques
• “The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.” -William James
• “The aim of the college, for the individual student, is to eliminate the need in his life for the college; the task is to help him become a self-educating man.” -Wright Mills
• “The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.” – B. B. King
• “The chief value in going to college is that it’s the only way to learn it really doesn’t matter. ” -George Edwin Howes
• “The college graduate is presented with a sheepskin to cover his intellectual nakedness.” -Robert M. Hutchins
• “The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living differ from the dead.” – Aristotle
• “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
• “The pain you feel today will be the strength you feel tomorrow.” – Nicole
• “The path to success is to take massive, determined action.” – Tony Robbins
• “There is no elevator to success. You have to take the stairs.” – Zig Ziglar
• “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” – Paulo Coelho
• “The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.” – Bruce Lee
• “The things taught in schools and colleges are not an education, but the means to an education.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

College life quote

• “The true success is the person who invented himself.” – Al Goldstein

• “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” – Walt Disney
• “To those of you who received honors, awards and distinctions, I say well done. And to the C students, I say you too may one day be president of the United States.” – George W. Bush
• “Tough times don’t last. Tough people do.” – Robert H. Schuller
• “Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond, cauliflower is nothing but cabbage without a college education.” -Mark Twain
• “Wake up with determination. Go to bed with satisfaction.” – unknown
• “Wanting something is not enough. You must hunger for it.” – Les Brown
• “What school, college, or lecture bring men depends on what men bring to carry it home in.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful.” – Eric Thomas
• “With the realization of one’s own potential and self-confidence in one’s ability, one can build a better world.” – Dalai Lama
• “You are the only one who can limit your greatness.” – Unknown
• “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”– Maya Angelou
• “You don’t get what you wish for. You get what you work for.” – Daniel Milstein
• “You don’t want to look back and know you could have done better.” – unknown
• “Your families are extremely proud of you. You can’t imagine the sense of relief they are experiencing. This would be a most opportune time to ask for money.” – Gary Bolding
• “Your goals are the roadmaps that guide you and show you what is possible for your life.” – Les Brown
• “Your talent is God’s gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God.” – Unknown
• “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”– Steve Jobs
• “You will either step forward into growth, or you will step backward into safety.” – Abraham Maslow
• “You will never always be motivated. You have to learn to be disciplined.” – unknown
• “You won’t get much done if you grind only on the days you feel good.” – Unknown

We hope these funny, inspirational and motivational quotes about college have inspired you. If so, please share this blog post with a friend or two who is preparing for their first semester at university!