The language we share is at the core of our identity as citizens, and our ticket to full participation in American political life. We can speak any language we want at the dinner table, but English is the language of public discourse, or the marketplace and of the voting booth.

Learning to write is learning to think. You don't know anything clearly unless you can state it in writing.

I'm going to speak my mind because I have nothing to lose.

English is the key to full participation in the opportunities of American life.

It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.

The United States is enriched by many cultures, and united by a single common language.

The traditional educational theory is to the effect that the way to bring up children is to keep them innocent (i.e., believing in biological, political, and socioeconomic fairy tales) as long as possible ... that students should be given the best possible maps of the territories of experience in order that they may be prepared for life, is not as popular as might be assumed.