Fran Lebowitz Quotes

It is better to support schools than jails.

Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.

All boys and girls should have the opportunity to receive a high-quality education, no matter what part of the country they live in and irrespective of whether their parents are rich or poor. It is the state's duty to make sufficient money available for the establishment of good public schools. A well-educated youth is crucial so that Chile can continue to grow economically.

If we do not pay for children in good schools, then we are going to pay for them in prisons and mental hospitals.

It's important for us to fight for certain changes that need to happen. And one of those issues that I really care about is education. But also another one is incarceration.

If all the rich and all of the church people should send their children to the public schools they would feel bound to concentrate their money on improving these schools until they met the highest ideals.

Everybody does good things, but I'm talking about making major changes in the educational system that would impact an entire race. I'm talking about stopping these young gang members from killing one another. I'm talking about keeping prisons from overflowing.

A children's author on a soapbox is not a pleasant sight but I have become drawn into issues, slightly unwillingly, relating to young people, literacy and youth justice: just look at the number of young people we have locked up in prison, and the uselessness of it.

My music reflects my strong belief in equal opportunities for all - specifically young girls and women. Many, many children do not have anywhere near the opportunities that we kids did in my community - great schools, public safety, etc.

There's a million things wrong with government that need to get fixed, but none of its ever going to get fixed unless we start educating our children better.

I've done work in every area of social justice you can think of, but I've been highly focused on young people and then specifically black and brown girls.

I just cannot understand why we can't have better schools. That private schools are the only option for the kind of high-net-worth crowd, I think, is ridiculous. It should be a major initiative. It should be something we're all working on. We have to get our head out of the clouds.

When I was growing up, there were a lot more arts in the public schools. Politically, America has screwed up on that.

How do we redefine education so that 30-50 percent of inner-city children do not drop out of school, thus ensuring that millions will end up in prison?

There are obvious places in which government can narrow the chasm between haves and have-nots. One is the public schools, which have been seen as the great leveler, the authentic melting pot. That, today, is nonsense. In his scathing study of the nation's public school system entitled "Savage Inequalities," Jonathan Kozol made manifest the truth: that we have a system that discriminates against the poor in everything from class size to curriculum.

Let us become the first generation to decide to be the last that sees empty classrooms, lost childhoods and wasted potential

Until we reach equality in education, we can't reach equality in the larger society.

Against the tyranny of forgetting, educators, young people, social activists, public intellectuals, workers and others can work to make visible and oppose the long legacy and current reality of state violence and the rise of the punishing state. Such a struggle suggests not only reclaiming, for instance, education as a public good but also reforming the criminal justice system and removing the police from schools.

Unless we improve our ability to provide a quality education for underprivileged kids, we're not going to really overcome in a massive way our past.

Look, we ought to do this for our kids... We ought to have a high school so that every kid who grows up here - they're all our kids - gets a good high school education.

My vision is that schools need to be community centers. Schools need to be open 12, 13, 14 hours a day six, seven days a week, 12 months out of the year, with a whole host of activities, particularly in disadvantaged communities.

Together, we will reclaim America's schools, before ignorance and apathy claim more young lives.

Education is the civil rights issue of our generation.

Look, we'll have to confront the pathologies of poverty at some point. We can deal with them cheaply at the front end, in infancy. Or we can wait and jail a troubled adolescent at the tail end. To some extent, we face a choice between investing in preschools or in prisons.

I bring truth to tha youth tear tha roof off tha ol' school.