Jonathan Kozol Quotes

Well, I never really practiced because I never had the opportunity to practice.

I accidentally forgot to graduate from college.

If something comes up I might write about it, but without an outlet the whole thing winds down.

Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.

The deepest personal defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become.

I almost get annoyed at the fact that I'm not going to use all that I got.

Man knows so much and does so little.

Where there are large powers with little ambition... nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes.

Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and... the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.

Hell begins on the day when God grants us a clear vision of all that we might have achieved, of all the gifts which we have wasted, of all that we might have done which we did not do.

Many thousands of youth have been deprived of the benefit of education thereby, their morals ruined, and talents irretrievably lost to society, for want of cultivation: while two parties have been idly contending who should bestow it.

History is nothing if not an epic tale of missed opportunities.

He was one of those men who possess almost every gift, except the gift of the power to use them.

A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life.

It sounds ideal, a sort of beach childhood. But it wasn't really. I didn't use the beach very much at all.

I have wasted my hours.

An unused life is an early death.

I have never truly applied myself. Lots of things have come too easily to me and at too high a level.

I have never been able to look upon America as young and vital but rather as prematurely old, as a fruit which rotted before it had a chance to ripen.

I wasted time writing films. I don't look back on those years as lost, but it wasn't what I should have been doing.

Lost are many great commissions by such neglect.

What a pity so few

The amount of death terror experienced is closely related to the amount of life unlived.

For a lot of different reasons I didn't fulfil my potential.

I don't want to be one of those could have, would have, should have kind of guys.