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

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.

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.

I encourage teachers to speak in their own voices. Don't use the gibberish of the standards writers.

It is but refusing to gratify an unreasonable or an insolent demand, and up starts a patriot.

Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.

The Christian life is not a constant high. I have my moments of deep discouragement. I have to go to God in prayer with tears in my eyes, and say, 'O God, forgive me,' or 'Help me.'

"Madam," replied Mr. Micawber, "it is my intention to register such a vow on the virgin page of the future."

Writing is hard work. Generating stories that catch people's attention and holding it are very difficult.

You become that to which you are most exposed.

Love is not really blind- the bandage is never so tight but that it can peep.

Without the protection of surliness and levity, all children would be crushed by the past—the past of others, loaded onto their shoulders. Selfishness is their saving grace.

This strange disease of modern life, With its sick hurry, its divided aims.

Of all the forms of water the tiny six-pointed crystals of ice called snow are incomparably the most beautiful and varied.