My parents are both college professors, and it made me want to question authority, standards and traditions.
I went through withdrawal when I got out of graduate school. It's what you learn, what you think. That's all that counts.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the transition from academic life to real-world experiences, emphasizing the importance of learning and personal perspective.
Maya Lin's quote captures the feeling of disconnection that often accompanies the completion of education, particularly graduate school. It suggests that the true value lies not in the formal credentials or titles earned, but in the knowledge gained and the way individuals choose to interpret and apply that knowledge in their lives. This perspective highlights the significance of critical thinking and personal growth beyond academic institutions.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a graduation speech, one might use this quote to inspire students about the importance of lifelong learning.
More from Maya Lin
All quotes βI try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That's art to me.
How we are using up our home, how we are living and polluting the planet is frightening. It was evident when I was a child. It's more evident now.
Sometimes you have to stop thinking. Sometimes you shut down completely. I think that's true in any creative field.
A lot of my works deal with a passage, which is about time. I don't see anything that I do as a static object in space. It has to exist as a journey in time.
When I was building the Vietnam Memorial, I never once asked the veterans what it was like in the war, because from my point of view, you don't pry into other people's business.
Similar quotes
That endless book, the newspaper, is our national glory.
A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination. On a cold, rainy island, they are the only sheltered public spaces where you are not a consumer, but a citizen, instead.
I learned to read a little in my primer, to write my own name, and to cypher some in the three first rules in figures. And this was all the schooling I ever had in my life, up to this day. I should have continued longer if it hadn't been that I concluded I couldn't do any longer without a wife, and so I cut out to hunt me one.
Telling purposeful stories is interactive. It's not a monolog. Ultimately, purposeful tellers must surrender control of their stories, creating a gap for the listener(s) to willingly cross in order to take ownership. Only when the listener(s) own the tellers' story and make it theirs, will they virally market it.
The Gospel which we possess was not given to us only to be admired, talked of, and professed - but to be practiced.
We don't yet know, above all, what the world might be like if children were to grow up without being subjected to humiliation, if parents would respect them and take them seriously as people.