What a racially segregated system once taught the young black about living with his inferiority is now taught by a benevolent social welfare system. The difference was that in an earlier age a black parent could fight the competing influences.

People need self-respect, but self-respect must be earned - it cannot be self-respect if it's not earned - and the only way to earn anything is to achieve it in the face of the possibility of failing.

The most troubling aspect of social policy towards the poor in late 20th century America is or how much it costs, but what it has bought.

Educational romanticism asks too much from students at the bottom of the intellectual pile, asks the wrong things from those in the middle, and asks too little from those at the top.

It was raining cats and dogs, and I fell in a poodle.

Give people plenty and security, and they will fall into spiritual torpor.

We tried to provide more for the poor and produced more poor instead. We tried to remove the barriers to escape poverty, and inadvertently built a trap.