On the principle laid down by Gilbert and Sullivan that when everybody is somebody, nobody is anybody; if everybody is abnormal, we don't need to worry about anybody.

The policy of the repression of ideas cannot work and never has worked. The alternative to it is the long difficult road of education. To this the American people have committed.

It sometimes seems as though we were trying to combine the ideal of no schools at all with the democratic ideal of schools for everybody by having schools without education.

...The task is overwhelming, and the chance is slight. We must take the chance or die.

My idea of education is to unsettle the minds of the young and inflame their intellects.

Every act of every man is a moral act, to be tested by moral, and not by economic criteria.

It must be remembered that the purpose of education is not to fill the minds of students with facts... it is to teach them to think.