People rarely speak of children; you hear of 'cohort groups' and 'standard variations,' but you don't hear much of boys who miss their cats or 6-year-olds who have to struggle with potato balls.

Racial segregation has come back to public education with a vengeance.

The greatest difference between now and 1964, when I began teaching, is that public policy has pretty much eradicated the dream of Martin Luther King.

You need massive recruitment to tell the poorest of the poor what is possible.

Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.

Separate and unequal didn't work 100 years ago. It will not work today.

The first goal and primary function of the U.S. public school is not to educate good people, but good citizens. It is the function which we call - in enemy nations - 'state indoctrination.'

False hope is worse than despair.

The cause of homelessness is lack of housing.

Apartheid education, rarely mentioned in the press or openly confronted even among once-progressive educators, is alive and well and rapidly increasing now in the United States.

The ones I pity are the ones who never stick out their neck for something they believe, never know the taste of moral struggle, and never have the thrill of victory.

You did say something I found offensive yesterday.What was that?I believe the word you used was friends.

Curiosity is a descending stair…that leads to only who-knows-where.

Mozart is the most inaccessible of the great masters.

The allegation of some progressives that America is an evil empire is not simply wrong—it is obscene.

Jazz is a good barometer of freedom.

I'll never stop wanting to kiss you," he whispered.

There’s no better guarantee of failure than convincing yourself that success is impossible, and therefore never even trying.

Color is born of the interpenetration of light and dark.

'Sympathy for the Devil' is just another way of saying 'Compassionate Conservative'.

It is not love, or morality, or international law that determines the outcome of world affairs, but the changing distribution of organized force