18 Quotes by William Raspberry

Good English, well spoken and written, will open more doors than a college degree. Bad English will slam doors you didn't even know existed.

People who believe a problem can be solved tend to get busy solving it.

It isn't the incompetence of mothers that is at issue, but the absence of half of the adult support needed for families to be most effective.

Parents who were not successful in school still have the power to teach.

Teenage male elephants in a South African game park stopped their delinquent behavior after several adult bulls were introduced into the herd.

It's always illegitimate for white men to organize as white men.

Our growing ability to eliminate the slow-moving aspects of entertainment and go hopping from one peak to another is not without cost. Stand-up comics, movie-makers and others who earn their living entertaining no longer "waste" time with setups and plot development, lest we reach for the remote and click them off our screen. The result is a loss of subtlety, anticipation and nuance and, in the process, a coarsening of our discourse.

It is a mistake to suppose that requiring the nonmathematical to take more advanced math courses will enhance their understanding and not merely exacerbate their sense of inadequacy.

If I could offer a single prescription for the survival of America, and particularly black America, it would be to restore the family. And if you asked me how to do it, my answer - doubtlessly oversimplified - would be; save the boys.