Jonathan Kozol Quotes

I'm not one of these people who thinks everyone born into privilege should wear sack cloth and ashes. But it's something I wrestle with. I know a lot of people who live below the poverty level and have for a long time and it makes them uneasy to think they'll have to interact with people from different economic levels. Everyone has some sort of load put on them, whatever the circumstances they're born into.

The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor.

We live increasingly in a world of haves and have-nots, of gated communities next to ghettos, of extreme poverty and unbelievable riches. Some enjoy rights that are completely denied to others. Relative inequalities are exploding, and the world's poorest, despite all the advances of globalisation, may even be getting poorer.

There are people much less fortunate than us, and I don't mean people hungry sleeping in the streets either.

It's not my fault that there is this gap between rich and poor, it is the fault of governments. I want a different world. One where I don't wake up thinking I'm so lucky to be able to feed my daughter.

Why is it that if you take advantage of a corporate tax break you're a smart businessman, but if you take advantage of something so you don't go hungry, you're a moocher?

Hunger, the inseparable companion of the poor, is the offspring of the unequal distribution of the wealth and the injustices in this world. The rich do not know hunger.

Society is composed of two great classes-those who have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.

The poor developed an envy and an extreme jealousy, born of the realization that they are as worthy, or even more worthy than the wealthy, and are nonetheless afflicted with poverty, hunger, misery, and contempt.

When you have an economically unequal society, you end up with huge swaths of society that are disposable, basically.

That was always my experience-a poor boy in a rich town; a poor boy in a rich boy's school; a poor boy in a rich man's club at Princeton .... However, I have never been able to forgive the rich for being rich, and it has colored my entire life and works.

The chasm between rich and poor is becoming larger, and I think it's interesting terrain to talk about and expose.

All the United States, it is a society that is split like to the bottom, that had very poor people in the country that is one of the wealthiest countries.

India happens to be a rich country inhabited by very poor people.

Working at the Food Bank with my kids is an eye-opener. The face of hunger isn't the bum on the street drinking Sterno; it's the working poor. They don't look any different, they don't behave any differently, they're not really any less educated. They are incredibly less privileged, and that's it.

What I worry about is the lack of understanding in society around the world that there is a divide in the world between those who have and those who do not.

Class still matters in Britain today.

Aspiration, it seems, is in danger of becoming the preserve of the wealthy.

In a city like New York, you're aware of the rich and poor.

It is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing.

The way corporate media likes to portray America is as a homogenous whole that high-five's each other at the Super Bowl. But what we have is a grotesque disparity between the rich and poor that is only getting wider.

You know, Saudi Arabia has a lot of poverty also. Regardless about what you hear about the viceroy and people being rich, et cetera.

I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil.

I'm ashamed to say that I'm from a very privileged background.

The money I pay for my cultural experiences came willingly from my own pocket - they were not the result of bread being removed from the mouths of the poor so that Miss Thing here could mince off to the circus smelling of roses.