Youth Quote Search

Welcome to the Striving to Thriving Youth Quote Library. Here you’ll find a curated collection of more than 5,700 quotes from young people ages 15-22 living in communities across the United States. In the library you can see how young people describe their multifaceted identities, how they understand and apply meaning to language around job, work and career, how they think about and assign value to relationships, networking and connections, and their future goals and the education and career choices they believe will lead them there. You can also view additional notes on curation, categories and filters. 

  • Pathways
  • Steps and stages

“Go to college and learn about mechanics and then graduate. Work and then start a business and buy a shop.”

Participant:

  • Los Angeles, CA
  • white
  • male
  • 15-22
  • mixed income
  • Appealing jobs or careers
  • Aspirations and Goals

“Sound engineering. [Regular customer.]”

Participant:

  • Oakland, CA
  • Hispanic
  • male
  • 15-22
  • lower income
  • Characterizations of a good job
  • Understanding Job/Work/Career

“How much I’m saving. I feel like if I get to pay my bills and I do what I want to do and I’m saving.”

Participant:

  • Atlanta, GA
  • Black
  • male
  • 15-22
  • lower income
  • Aspirations and Goals
  • Imagining their future selves

[At 45] “…no kids, a couple sugar daddies probably. I probably want to start a charity…If I am going to be successful, then why not share my money? If I’ve got sugar daddies, I’ve got enough money.”

Participant:

  • Oakland, CA
  • Black
  • female
  • 15-22
  • mixed income
  • Pathways
  • Steps and stages

“So and then it goes on to me hopefully joining the military, and then kind of like having, moving onto where I’m hopefully finding a career I like to do in the military…Yeah, so like I pick a career, and then I have an arrow going back to the military in case like I choose a career that doesn’t suit me right away. I like choose another career, and then move on…And then I have to go to live my life through the military is what I want to do. And then once I live up to the time to retire from the military, but I’ll still be young enough at that point, so I put look for a career outside of the military that is still linked to the things I learned and training in the military. And then, hopefully, I’ll find the career and enjoy it, but if not, then I go back, and I draw another arrow back to looking for another career outside of the military.”

Participant:

  • Yakima, WA
  • white
  • male
  • 15-22
  • lower income
  • Challenges and Barriers
  • Discrimination and Bias

“It is like just being Black, it was kinda like already automatically already having a target on your back. So it’s like you gotta watch what you’re doing, how you do it, and when you do it. And then like, when you go to like certain companies, they got their picks where they’re not going to hire a certain person. Like for example, like a lot of Black guys…if you’re hair not cut to a certain length or shaped up a certain way, or brushed down a certain way, they won’t hire you. Just because they feel like you’re unprofessional. Also, like the way your clothes look.”

Participant:

  • Baltimore, MD
  • Black
  • male
  • 15-22
  • lower income
  • Challenges and Barriers
  • Death, loss and uncertainty

“When it comes to my illness, I am technically terminally ill when it comes to – I have a disorder called gastro paresis. My stomach is paralyzed, so that has me in the hospital a whole lot getting feeding tubes put in every 6 months, that sort of thing.”

Participant:

  • Pueblo, CO
  • white
  • female
  • 15-22
  • lower income
  • Perceptions of the term 'job'
  • Understanding Job/Work/Career

“Passionate.”

Participant:

  • Online
  • Black
  • male
  • 15-22
  • lower income
  • Characterizations of a good job
  • Understanding Job/Work/Career

“Interesting [job].”

Participant:

  • Pueblo, CO
  • Hispanic
  • female
  • 15-22
  • lower income
  • Challenges and Barriers
  • Personal traits and experiences

“The challenges I am going to face in college, passing all my classes. For the police academy, it is going to be focusing on physical training mostly and trying to keep up the required amount of strength and weight that I have to. As a police officer, try not to die.”

Participant:

  • New York, NY
  • Hispanic
  • male
  • 15-22
  • higher income