top of page
"Instead of seeing these children for the blessings that they are, we are measuring them only by the standard of whether they will be future deficits or assets for our nation's competitive needs."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Politics quotes

"The trouble with Nixon is that he's a serious politics junkie. He's totally hooked and like any other junkie, he's a bummer to have around, especially as President."

"Earthquake means destruction; dictator means destruction! In the case of earthquake, you need a strong building; in the case of dictator, you need an educated rational mind, because an irrational ignorant mind always serves the dictator!"

"In America any boy may become President, and I suppose it's just one of the risks he takes!"

"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government."

"Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor."

"The grass always seems greener on the other side of the fence. Many politicians promise green, green grass by blending niceties with delusion and by using alluring confidence tricks. They voice attractive tales and tell things, people like to hear. But the post-factual grassland often appears to be parched and barren. ['The grass was greener over there']"

"Government scientists are commonly as corrupt as the corporate government that employs them."

"Most USA citizens never realize that the systems of public protection are essentially useless until they try to use them. At that point they learn the hard way that government agencies like OSHA, FCC, FDA, police internal affairs, disability, and the like do not work for them."
Explore more quotes by Jonathan Kozol

"The ones I pity are the ones who never stick out their neck for something they believe, never know the taste of moral struggle, and never have the thrill of victory."

"What I tell these young people is, the world is not as dangerous as the older generation would like you to believe. Anyone I know who has ever taken a risk and lost a job has ended up getting a better one two years later."

"But for the children of the poorest people we're stripping the curriculum, removing the arts and music, and drilling the children into useful labor. We're not valuing a child for the time in which she actually is a child."

"Children are not simply commodities to be herded into line and trained for the jobs that white people who live in segregated neighborhoods have available."

"Even if you never do anything about this, you've benefited from an unjust system. You're already the winner in a game that was rigged to your advantage from the start."

"If you grow up in the South Bronx today or in south-central Los Angeles or Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, you quickly come to understand that you have been set apart and that there's no will in this society to bring you back into the mainstream."

"The primary victims of Katrina, those who were given the least help by the government, those rescued last or not at all, were overwhelmingly people of color largely hidden from the mainstream of society."

"At that time, I had recently finished a book called Amazing Grace, which many people tell me is a very painful book to read. Well, if it was painful to read, it was also painful to write. I had pains in my chest for two years while I was writing that book."
bottom of page