Jonathan Kozol Quotes

We aspire to be equal opportunity, but all across the country where a student is born, their race, their class affect where they end up.

Disparity is Australia's worst social problem. Thousands of lives are slowly being crushed, while billions are wasted on thousands of little initiatives trying to 'close the gap.'

I think Republicans need to take income inequality more seriously. Not because I favor equality of outcomes. I do not. I think the Right is correct to stress merit and earned rewards, not handouts and forced equality. But I think what Republicans are blind to is that power corrupts.

The gap in education in this country, the unfairness of the schools, is one of the great unfairness in this society.

At the end of the day, we have an economy that works for the rich by cheating the poor, and unequal schools are the result of that, not the cause.

Schools are not equal. There are still the haves and the have-nots.

The MLK Shabbat Suppers focused on the theme of educational inequity, which Dr. King considered inextricably linked to the struggle for equality and justice.

I grew up in a very progressive family and with a great educational system, and I asked myself, 'Why doesn't everybody have these opportunities for a good education? So why not give back to these kids who didn't grow up with the same privileges I had?'

I don't totally believe that all of the politicians see a problem with the gap between the scores of black children and other groups. I believe that many politicians think this has been the way it has always been, so what's the problem?

We cannot ignore the disparity in resources that continue to plague many of our school systems, especially those serving predominantly inner-city minority and impoverished children.

As to their (Negroes’) Stupidity, there is as little truth therein: divers of them being known and confessed by their Owners, to be extraordinary Ingenious, and even to exceed many of the English. And for the rest, they are much the same with other People, destitute of the means of knowledge, and wanting Education

What the North is sending down for our schools is not money but dynamite. This education is ruining our negroes. They’re demanding equality.

Why did the world ever become so unequal?

We still have two public school systems in the United States: One for the haves and one for the have-nots.

The public education system works for children of families like mine but it does not work for the children of families who I represent …

To educate men who must be condemned to poverty, is but to make them restive; to base on a state of most glaring social inequality political institutions under which men are theoretically equal, is to stand a pyramid on its apex.

You can make too much of inequality because there is always so much of it.

When you don't have equality of opportunity because you don't have equal access to education, it just seems so outrageous. It weakens our economy and leads to more inequality.

Canadians would not tolerate it if they really knew there was a whole generation of aboriginal Canadians who have a chance at a better education and are being denied it.

If you were born white, you automatically have a monstrous advantage educationally, economically, culturally, and within the society.

Let me ask you: Should only children of the wealthy have access to quality early education? Should only children of the wealthy have access to a college degree? The answer - the only answer - is: no.

I hate the fact that public schools like the one I went to have fantastic sports facilities, and state schools don't. That's not fair. That's outrageous.

I think that there always have been and always will be at least two Americas - the poor America, the second America, tends to be in the shadows. Sometimes it's an America of people in a ghetto of color, sometimes it's an economic ghetto, but definitely there is a parallel America which people in the dominant America prefer to ignore if they can.

I am upset and completely disappointed in the government, the millionaires and billionaires in the U.S. See what's happening to the country? Look at all the health problems, the economy, the recession and crime.

Poverty is unnecessary.