180 Quotes by Jonathan Kozol

The answers I remember longest are the ones that answer questions that I didn’t think of asking.

The idea that private money can solve our problems is very dangerous. Ultimately that’s charity. Charity is a lovely thing. I’ll never turn it down. But charity is not a substitute for systematic justice and equality.

I’d love to go back and teach primary school. I used to teach fourth grade and fifth grade. I’d love to spend several years teaching kindergarten or maybe third grade.

Many suburban legislators representing affluent school districts use terms such as “sinkhole” when opposing funding for Chicago’s children. “We can’t keep throwing money,” said Governor Thompson in 1988, “into a black hole.” The Chicago Tribune notes that, when this phrase is used, people hasten to explain that it is not intended as a slur against the race of many of Chicago’s children. “But race,” says the Tribune, “never is far from the surface...

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.

Unless we have the wealth to pay for private education, we are compelled by law to go to public school – and to the public school in our district. Thus the state, by requiring attendance but refusing to require equity, effectively requires inequality. Compulsory inequity, perpetuated by state law, too frequently condemns our children to unequal lives.

People who know but do not act do evil too. I don’t know if I would call them evil but they’re certainly not thinking about heaven.

Discrimination is alive and soaring.

We know that segregation is evil. We know that the sickest children should not go to the worst hospitals. No, I refuse to pretend the problem is insufficient knowledge. We lack the theological will to do it.