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.
“Female, Hispanic/Afro-Latina, non-denominational Christian…My father is from Costa Rica but his family originated from Jamaica, and my mother is Puerto Rican but she is much more fair skinned. I acknowledge the parts of my background that make me who I am so there are African-Spanish people out there so that is why I acknowledge the fact that I am Afro-Latina.”
[Personal Strength] “Driven.”
“A sense of fulfillment.”
“Clothes.”
“Male, mixed race ethnicity so I put white Cuban, Hispanic for ethnicity. I believe in culture; religion I put Christian. I don’t really like see what my culture is, but I have to say this town has pretty much, I guess, raised me. I’ve been here all my life.”
“I hope so but there are a lot of racist people, so they could just lower the pay, or they could be saying stuff about me.”
“I agree. Like if you want help, help can’t just come to you. You have to go out and find it. You have to seek it. If you really want to do something, you can’t really do it on your own. You really need support to make you feel better and it gives you confidence, too.”
[By age 25] “When I’m 25 I see myself doing crazy things, I guess. It will be my last youthful days.”
“[My parents] would always like push me like for school. Before I graduated, they would always push me to like work harder and make sure I passed all of my classes…I did what I had to do, and I passed all of my classes.”
“[At 70] I’m dead.”