These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves. From each of them goes out its own voice... and just as the touch of a button on our set will fill the room with music, so by taking down one of these volumes and opening it, one can call into range the voice of a man far distant in time and space, and hear him speaking to us, mind to mind, heart to heart.

Most Americans do not like poetry. We may respect it, but we do not enjoy it.

The teacher's chief difficulty is poverty. He (or she) belongs to a badly paid profession. He cannot dress and live like a workman, but he is sometimes paid as little as an unskilled laborer.

I believe that much of the maladjustment in our societies is caused, not by malevolence and corruption, but simply by ignorance.

The best school in the world will scarcely save a boy who hates the school and the purpose it serves and the society that created it.

Poetry is halfway between prose and music: it is sometimes like an intimate conversation, in words and phrases which need not be fully uttered, and sometimes like dancing and wordless music.

Know the subject; love the subject; like your students; know your students.