"It started 25 years ago, when I was teaching elementary school in a small town in Missouri"

"Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other"

"Education is a private matter between the person and the world of knowledge and experience, and has little to do with school or college"

"A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching"

"Learning and teaching should not stand on opposite banks and just watch the river flow by; instead, they should embark together on a journey down the water. Through an active, reciprocal exchange, teaching can strengthen learning how to learn"

"Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre"

"He who opens a school door, closes a prison"

"The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next"

"Now we maintain that we cannot be afford to be concerned about 6 percent of the children in this country, black children, who you allow to come into white schools. We have 94 percent who still live in shacks. We are going to be concerned about those 94 percent"

"The first step in the acquisition of wisdom is silence, the second listening, the third memory, the fourth practice, the fifth teaching others"

"As we read the school reports on our children, we realize a sense of relief that can rise to delight that thank Heaven nobody is reporting in this fashion on us"