Dave Obey Quotes

Further Education should be about the ability to learn, not the ability to pay - everyone who is able should have the opportunity, regardless of their family background. I don't want to see students struggling with huge debts or frightened off even going to university in the first place.

Education is the great equalizer, and shouldn’t be limited to the wealthiest few.

I'm a beneficiary of an extraordinary education, and I believe that no matter where you live, the access to education is key to social mobility.

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.

A basic element of the American dream is equal access to education as the lubricant of social and economic mobility.

I care about education for everyone, not just the elite.

The public schools in our neighborhood were so bad that the teachers in the school said you shouldn't send your kids here. My mother called around and found a school that was willing to give both me and my brother scholarship money. It's a classic story about black parents wanting more for their kids than they had for themselves.

In our democracy every young person should have an equal opportunity to obtain a higher education, regardless of his station in life or financial means.

I look back and see the kids who made it through school - it made a huge difference in their lives, which made me believe in the power of public education and what it can do for individuals and communities and the state.

The Time to Succeed Coalition brings together an unprecedented group of leaders from education and business, communities and academia to say that it is time to strike the shackles of an outdated school calendar from our disadvantaged schools.

Public schools were designed as the great equalizers of our society - the place where all children could have access to educational opportunities to make something of themselves in adulthood.

A large number of students around the world don't really have access to high quality education. So, launching EdX allows students all over the world to have much better access to a high quality education from a university such as Harvard, MIT, Berkeley and others as we add more universities.

I believe that it is higher education's purpose and calling to keep open the door to the American dream.

President-elect Bush spoke in a forceful and candid manner that it is his passion that all children should have access to a first class education.

If we do not provide education for every single American, we are consigning those without an education to second-class status.

If we don't empower families to be able to have a quality education, then their children - for the first time in American history, truly the first time - will not have the same economic opportunities.

One of the most powerful tools for empowering individuals and communities is making certain that any individual who wants to receive a quality education can do so.

Unless we make education a priority, an entire generation of Americans could miss out on the American dream.

If you stop and think about our history, one of the reasons we had an American century and there is an American dream was because at key points in our history we made very bold decisions about making sure that there was very broad, universal access to quality education.

Public education is the great equalizer of America.

… poor people deserve access to food, education, housing, and medical services

… adult education should be made available … so that our less privileged groups may be able to avail themselves of new openings which require more education than they possess.

I do not feel that, in these important years, girls should be chosen for college purely on the basis of whether they can afford to pay for this opportunity. They should be there because of the potential value which they will bring to the Nation. If they have this added training, the Nation should be willing to put something toward their development.

For me, education has never been simply a policy issue - it's personal. Neither of my parents and hardly anyone in the neighborhood where I grew up went to college. But thanks to a lot of hard work and plenty of financial aid, I had the opportunity to attend some of the finest universities in this country.

I went to a prep school in Chicago, and my dad and mom worked really hard - even though we lived in the ghetto - to get me to there. A lot of it had to do with 'Stand and Deliver' and 'Dead Poet's Society.' It does help you. It inspires you. It definitely did for me.