Robert Reich Quotes

When you're small, you either are funny, or you get beat up a lot.

As a youth, I and most of the other smarter kids in school got picked on by bullies. I was a big guy - even at a young age - and would take the beatings for my friends, who were often smaller and scrawnier.

That kind of 'Lord of the Flies' brutality of being 11, it's a tough time. You're trying to figure out who you are, and who your friends are, and what your alliances are, and kids fall out all the time.

I'm not sure who invented dodgeball, but I can almost guarantee you that it wasn't the shortest kid in the class.

That’s just the kind of thing that kids do to each other. It’s no big deal. There’s always going to be a person laughing and somebody getting laughed at. It happens every day, in every school, in every town in America—probably in the world, for all I know. The whole point of growing up is learning to stay on the laughing side.

In high school, I got picked on. It's funny that I got tormented for what I'm doing now - the acting thing. People would see me in a Nickelodeon commercial, and I would hear about it the next day at school. Kids would say, 'Hi, TV Boy.' They heckled. I never got beat up.

Because, ten-year-olds of the world, you shouldn't believe what your teachers tell you about the beauty and specialness and uniqueness of you. Or, believe it, little snowflake, but know it won't make a bit of difference until after puberty. It's Newton's lost law: anything that makes you unique later will get your chocolate milk stolen and your eye blackened as a kid. Won't it, Sebastian? Oh, yes, it will, my little Mandarin Chinese-learning, Poe-reciting, high-top-wearing friend. God bless you, wherever you are.

My dad actually taught me to box when I was, like, nine years old, because I got picked on at school all of the time. I was on a boys' hockey team, so I would get all of my aggression out there.

I had these experiences as a kid; I remember certain things happening in school that were horrifying that I would see, certain things of violence or certain things of cruelty, but around that, something might happen afterwards to cause everyone to laugh, and that always blew me away.

I got beat up by the comic-book kids when I was younger! They were cooler than me. Talk about levels of geekdom, I was a couple rungs below the kids who read comic books. Yeah. Not so cool, man.

My parents said sticks and stones will break your bones but names will never hurt you. But I always felt a sense of exhilaration after a fight; it was the names that really hurt me.

Who has the best features? This was a little game, conducted several times and always with the same results, in seventh grade, the time when so many of life's little horrors begin.

I think being mean to people in high school is healthy. It's sort of like you're in this situation with all these other kids and sometimes you need to get your aggression out. And if you'd had people be mean to you before, it really does build character.

I was bullied as a boy - lots of kids are, but hopefully most of us get on with our lives and grow up.

I think dealing with mean girls is just a part of life. I never really took people like that too seriously.

I never really called people out. It was more along the lines of teasing a person. It started for me in fifth grade on the basketball court.

Childhood bullying was a big part of my life.

The only thing I learnt in high school is that people are very violent and territorial.

I got picked on a lot as a kid.

When you're a kid, you don't want to be teased.

I was a bit of a loudmouth, and I was in an environment where the elements aligned to have kids smack the hell outta me once in a while.

I played lots of bullies when I was a kid.

I used to get off the bus, and there'd be a crowd around, you know, and I was thinking, 'God, I hope this is not for me.' And it normally was, and it was because someone said something to my sister, and the first she says is, 'Well, I'll get my brother.'

All the kids at school would bully me and always wanted me to fight them. I never did, but if I wanted to, I totally could.

There were a lot of gangs in high school. Instead of being in a gang, I decided to dance.