"There has been a growing consensus across the country - from statehouses to the White House and the halls of Congress - that we need to take dramatic steps to improve our secondary schools"

"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"

"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"

"If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?"

"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"

"They say women talk too much. If you have worked in Congress you know that the filibuster was invented by men"

"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"

"Did you know that nearly one in three children live apart from their biological dads? Those kids are two to three times more likely to grow up in poverty, to suffer in school, and to have health and behavioral problems"

"I wanted to escape so badly. But of course I knew I couldn't just give up and leave school. It was only when I heard my mom's voice that I came out of my hiding place"