Unlike these powerful grown-ups, children have no ideologies to reinforce, no superstructure of political opinion to promote, no civic equanimity or image to defend, no personal reputation to secure.

Nationally, overwhelmingly non-white schools receive $1,000 less per pupil than overwhelmingly white schools.

False hope is worse than despair.

Childhood is not merely basic training for utilitarian adulthood. It should have some claims upon our mercy, not for its future value to the economic interests of competitive societies but for its present value as a perishable piece of life itself.

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.

The answers I remember longest are the ones that answer questions that I didn't think of asking.

But when I went to Harvard, it kind of got washed out of me, partly because people made fun of you in college. If you said you believed in God, they would look at you clinically, you know, suggest that you needed a referral.