Early Life and Education
Sperling was born into a poor sharecropper family in the Missouri Ozarks. His father worked for the railroad and his mother was a fundamentalist Christian. He spent several years as a sailor in the merchant marine, and even as a wandering 1950s beatnik. He received his undergraduate education at Reed College, Oregon, a master's from the University of California, Berkeley under the G.I. Bill, and then went on to attain a PhD in Economic History at the University of Cambridge.
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Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or education:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
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“Foolish prater, What dost thou
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Cruel bird, thou’st ta’en away
A dream out of my arms to-day;
A dream that ne’er must equall’d be
By all that waking eyes may see.
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“Then farewell, world; thy uttermost I see;
Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me.”
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