I think a moment of critical energy has suddenly emerged. But moments like this come and go unless we seize them at their height.

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.'

Wonderful teachers should never let themselves be drill sergeants for the state.

You have to remember. . .that for this little boy whom you have met, his life is just as important to him, as your life is to you. No matter how insufficient or how shabby it may seem to some, it is the only one he has.

A dream does not die on its own. A dream is vanquished by the choices ordinary people make about real things in their own lives.

I once made a check of all books in my fourth-grade classroom. Of the slightly more than six hundred books, almost one quarter had been published prior to the bombing of Hiroshima; 60 percent were either ten years old or older.

Children are not simply commodities to be herded into line and trained for the jobs that white people who live in segregated neighborhoods have available.