“Parents have become so convinced that educators know what is best for their children that they forget that they themselves are really the experts.”

“Education is a precondition to survival in America today.”

“Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it.”

“I'm sure I am impatient sometimes. I sure do get angry sometimes. I think it's outrageous how hard it is to get this country to feed its children and to take care of its children, to give them a decent education.”

“Unless children have strong education and strong families and strong communities and decent housing, it's not enough to go sit in at a lunch counter.”

“It was very clear to me in 1965, in Mississippi, that, as a lawyer, I could get people into schools, desegregate the schools, but if they were kicked off the plantations - and if they didn't have food, didn't have jobs, didn't have health care, didn't have the means to exercise those civil rights, we were not going to have success.”

“I never travel without my sketch book.”