Dorothy Parker
Poet, Writer, Critic
"If all the young ladies who attended the Yale promenade dance were laid end to end, no one would be the least surprised."
Yale quotes
Yale
137 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Novelist
"Scratch a Yale man with both hands and you'll be lucky to find a coast-guard. Usually you find nothing at all."
Dorothy Parker
Poet, Writer, Critic
"If all the girls attending [the Yale prom] were laid end to end, I wouldn't be at all surprised."
Kiki Smith
Artist
"I told the students [at Yale] we were going to talk about love - I meant love in the sense of devotions to one's work - and about half the students got really pissed off."
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Novelist
"I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the 'Yale News.'—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the 'well-rounded man.' This isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all."
Explore further
Topics related to Yale
Browse quotes that often appear alongside yale — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Yale quotes (page 1 of 7)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Yale has influenced the Central Intelligence Agency more than any other university, giving the CIA the atmosphere of a class reunion."
Read quote
15 likes
"Nefarious. This is what we get when we hire a Yale boy.” “You missed sacrosanct earlier. And taciturn and glowering,” Jack said. “What’s glowering?” “Me, apparently.” Wilkins pointed. “Now that has to be a joke.” He turned to Davis. “You heard that, right?” Davis didn’t answer him, having spun his chair around to type something at his computer. “Let’s see what Google says… Ah – here it is. ‘Glowering: dark; showing a brooding ill humor."
Read quote
12 likes
"Harvard and Yale concentrated with venture capitalists that got the best calls and brainpower. Very few firms made most of the money, and they made it in just a few periods. Everyone else returned between mediocre and lousy. When returns happened, envy rippled through institutional money management. The amount invested in venture capital went up 10 times post-1999. That later money was lost very quickly. It will happen again. I don't know anyone who successfully resists this stuff. It becomes a new orthodoxy."
Read quote
10 likes
"I really worked very hard to bring my voice back because I used to have a good voice, and to try to do my exercises that I remember from Yale and all the things in the olden days, clearing your sinuses and all that."
Read quote
8 likes
"Voters inclined to loathe and fear elite Ivy League schools rarely make fine distinctions between Yale and Harvard. All they know is that both are full of rich, fancy, stuck-up and possibly dangerous intellectuals who never sit down to supper in their undershirt no matter how hot the weather gets."
Read quote
7 likes
"I was off to Yale to be a lesbian"
Read quote
7 likes
"I was probably the first kid in my high school to go to Yale. I applied almost as a lark. Then, when I got there, I was the dumbest person in your class."
Read quote
7 likes
"It is, of course, further indication that a fundamentalist right has really taken over much of the Republican Party, People might cite George Bush as proof that you can be totally impervious to the effects of Harvard and Yale education."
Read quote
6 likes
"Vietnam was an exercise in mistaken idealism Iraq in cynical money-making. And there's no optimism or idealism now -- Americans are tired of knowledge. Our leaders, the C-students from Yale, know this. We're proud of being ignorant that leaves virtue at our core. We aren't frazzled by knowledge like foreigners, so we can be trusted."
Read quote
6 likes
"I had a very pleasant three years at Yale. I must say I did take it seriously, and consequently it took me a while to get over it."
Read quote
5 likes
"And Yale is November, crisp and energetic."
Read quote
5 likes
"Maybe that is the best lesson I learned in my first semester at Yale, because if I had gone to a less-demanding school and continued to sail along on the top, I am sure I would never have attained the subsequent achievements in my life."
Read quote
4 likes
"Texas Governor Rick Perry distanced himself from George W. Bush by saying, 'I went to Texas A&M. He went to Yale.' In other words, his idea of instilling confidence is by saying, 'Don't worry. I'm not as smart as George W. Bush.'"
Read quote
4 likes
"Before I was born [my father] wanted me to go specifically to Yale, which he thought would help. It was easy for him to think I could be president: he didn't have to worry about being president himself, being ineligible because he wasn't born in the United States."
Read quote
3 likes
"I auditioned for 'Girls' the fall after I graduated from Yale. The show has been amazing - as close to perfect as it gets!"
Read quote
3 likes
"Privilege, if you're very strict, is an immoral and unjust thing to have, but if you've got it you didn't choose to get it and you might as well use it. You're privileged to be at Yale, but you know you're under an obligation to repay what's been put into you."
Read quote
3 likes
"John Lewis Gaddis is not only the favorite historian of the Reagan administration, but he's regarded as the dean of Cold War scholarship, the leading figure in the American Cold War scholarship, a professor at Yale."
Read quote
3 likes
"My parents were married for sixty-five years, and I was married for about ten minutes, my first year at Yale Drama School. Something, somehow, didn't get passed on to my generation."
Read quote
3 likes
"The career I chose was a drama major in college, at Yale, when I played a 90-year-old woman. One of my most celebrated roles. Then I played a really fat person. I played a lot of different things. That's how I thought I loved to wrangle my talent, my need to express myself. I like to do it that way."
Read quote
3 likes
"I was once asked if I had any ideas for a really scary reality TV show. I have one reality show that would really make your hair stand on end: "C-Students from Yale"."
Read quote
3 likes