“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.”