People of good character are not all going to come down on the same side of difficult political and social issues. Good people - people of character and moral literacy - can be conservative, and good people can be liberal. We must not permit our disputes over thorny political questions to obscure the obligation we have to offer instruction to all our young people in the area in which we have, as a society, reached a consensus: namely, on the importance of good character, and some of its pervasive particulars.

Our schools should get five years to get back to where they were in 1963. If they're still bad maybe we should declare educational bankruptcy, give the people their money and let them educate themselves and start their own schools

Loving your homeland is just as natural as loving your father or mother - after all, your country nourishes you, protects you, and in many ways makes you who you are. Just as it's a virtue to honor your parents, it's a good and admirable thing to honor the land you call home.

Government, obviously, cannot fill a child's emotional needs. Nor can it fill his spiritual and moral needs. Government is not a father or mother. Government has never raised a child, and it never will.

All real education is the architecture of the soul.

The elementary school must assume as its sublime and most solemn responsibility the task of teaching every child in it to read. Any school that does not accomplish this has failed.

True courage is mixed with circumspection, the kind of healthy skepticism that asks, 'Is this the best way to do this?' True cowardice is marked by chronic skepticism, which always says, 'It can't be done.'