It’s not the job of the teacher to save a child’s soul; it is the teacher’s job to provide an opportunity for the child to save his own soul.

That's the beauty of art--we strive for perfection but never achieve it. The journey is everything.

The reason I love teaching, it's like being a miner. I find all these undiscovered jewels and, with the right motivation, they're amazed at what they can do. I have to show them their capability.

I want my students to love to read. Reading is not a subject. Reading is a foundation of life, an activity that people who are engaged with the world do all the time

I don't think we expect enough of students. They just need someone to show them the way.

Teach like your hair's on fire!

I want my kids to know that they're just as good and just as American as Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, or Dr. Martin Luther King. My worst fear is they will become ordinary.

Good teachers are an endangered species because they're giving up because of the tests and everything.

I love Shakespeare. In Shakespeare, tragedy is not just something that's bad. It's something that could be good and is bad.

Baseball is a religion in my classroom. It's a very important part of life, baseball.

I always tell the kids that excellence is like pregnancy. You can't be a little bit pregnant. You either are or you're not.

It amazed me how quickly a lie loses its power in the face of truth.

Government holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force.

What I can't be is monogamous. That tends to upset people. I just don't like domestic life.

An individual is not distinct from his place. He is his place.

When you are calm, quiet and sensitive then you can expand. But when you are irritated, phobic, fearful, insensitive, and neurotic, you can't achieve anything.

Peel off these dusty wool blankets of apathy and antipathy and cynical desiccation. I want life in all its stupid sticky rawness.

I've had horror movies thrown at me and I just don't want to do any because violence isn't really good for society.

Whether it is sunny or rainy, make your walk to your destination!

Cajun is country food by farmers and fisherman that arrived in Louisiana from Acadiana, Canada.

Independence must be accompanied by a social revolution