Geoffrey Canada Quotes

If, as the popular saying goes, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, the people who run our public schools fit that description.

Very few charter schools are being created in some of the best school districts in the state. If you're an educational innovator, that isn't where the greatest need is.

Obviously, this whole 'no child left behind' idea is more rhetoric than actual practice.

Teach For America was built on the idea that our best hope of reaching 'One Day' is to have thousands of alumni use their diverse experiences and ideas to effect change from inside and outside the education system.

To make me believe that those men who have regulated education in our country have humanity in their hearts is to make me believe a lie.

The immediate future is going to be tragic for all of us unless we find a way of making the vast educational resources of this country serve the true purpose of education, truth and justice.

We spend a lot of time training and retraining. It's heartbreaking because our education system has failed all of us. And again you go to China, even Mexico, Brazil the education systems are valued - ours are not in this country at K-12 level. It's amazing how that change has transpired in my lifetime.

When you make $78 billion a year, as the three large oil companies are doing, you have no interest in changing the status quo…. Oil companies are not interested innovation.

Our approach is very much profiting from lack of change rather than from change.

In spite of warnings, nothing much happens until the status quo becomes more painful than change.

It is a foolish man who believes that the status quo can be maintained indefinitely.

Inertia is comforting, and Americans will be extremely reluctant to make any change that might affect their high standard of living.

Change is not popular; we are creatures of habit as human beings. 'I want it to be the way it was.' But if you continue the way it was there will be no 'is.'

Ninety-eight percent are boxes, which tells me that a lot of people are in denial. We live and work in boxes. People don't even notice that. Most of what's around us is banal. We live with it. We accept it as inevitable. People say, "This is the world the way it is, and don't bother me." Then when somebody does something different, real architecture, the push-back is amazing. People resist it. At first it's new and scary.

Those who don't want to change, let them sleep.

What if I told you that 10 years from now, your life would be exactly the same? I doubt you would be happy. So, why are you so afraid of change?

I understand that change is frightening for people, especially if there's nothing to go to. It's best to stay where you are. I understand that.

There is something deeply hypocritical in a society that holds an inner-city child only eight years old "accountable" for her performance on a high-stakes standardized exam but does not hold the high officials of our government accountable for robbing her of what they gave their own kids six or seven years before.

I think some people are just very passionate that things remain the way they were when they were kids.

I'm all for prosperity. It's change I object to.

We ought not to be over-anxious to encourage innovation in cases of doubtful improvement, for an old system must ever have two advantages over a new one; it is established, and it is understood.

Conservatism is the maintenance of conventions already in force.

Never accept or be too comfortable with the status quo, because the companies that get into trouble are historically the ones that aren't able to adapt to change and respond quickly enough.

The overwhelming pressure of mediocrity, sluggish and indomitable as a glacier, will mitigate the most violent, and depress the most exalted revolution.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it' is the slogan of the complacent, the arrogant or the scared. It's an excuse for inaction, a call to non-arms.