You need to find a way to live your life, that it doesn't make a mockery of your values.

Education is the motor-force of revolution.

It's the connection between schools and communities that creates greatness in schools.

Jane Addams, founder of Hull House, once asked, "How shall we respond to the dreams of youth?" It is a dazzling and elegant question, a question that demands an answer--a range of answers, really, spiraling outward in widening circles.

When you go into a college of education you've got aspirations of making a difference in people's lives, of loving children, of working with kids, but none of that is affirmed in your college of education. Then you go working in schools, especially in places like New York City and Chicago that I'm most familiar with, and you find these huge aspirations are beaten out of you in a very systematic way - and still people persevere.

Large numbers of people are broken from the notion that the system is working for people, that the system is just or humane or peaceful.

I more or less shared the view that life should be lived.