Jonathan Kozol Quotes

Gotta start teaching the children that they can be just what they want to be, there's much more to life than poverty.

In Kenya, I met wonderful girls; girls who wanted to help their communities. I was with them in their school, listening to their dreams. They still have hope. They want to be doctor and teachers and engineers.

I spent ridiculous amounts of time as an activist and volunteer and was a teacher for 20 years.

Teachers do the noble work of educating our children. And we can't thank them enough for the hard work they put in every day to ensure a bright future for all of us.

Boosting education will be a direct counterbalance to Boko Haram's appeal. In particular we must educate more young girls, ensuring they will grow up to be empowered through learning to play their full part as citizens of Nigeria and pull themselves up and out of poverty.

I want to change the world. I want to be a part of culture. I want to help teach.

Centuries have elapsed since schools were first established.... Because learning was viewed as the exclusive province of the samurai and his superiors, farmers, artisans, merchants and women have neglected it altogether.... There shall, in the future, be no community with an illiterate family, nor a family with an illiterate person .... Hereafter ... every man shall, of his own accord, subordinate all other matters to the education of his children.

Stronger than all the armies is the idea whose time has come. The time has come for equality in sharing in government and education, and in employment. It will not be stayed or denied. It is here.

Education ... is the great equalizer of the conditions of men—the balance wheel of the social machinery.

Give education and knowledge to the common people.

Everything hinges on education. Without it, you can't advocate for proper health care, for housing, for a civil rights bill that ensures your rights.

What does the American Negro want? Full citizen status in our American democracy. How shall he reach that goal? By the inward power of the masses. And how shall that power be acquired? Fundamentally, on the highest plane and on the humblest, by a leadership motivated by a world-encompassing philosophy which is rooted in the will of God—a leadership which, itself a vital part of the force of events, is consecrated in humility to the immediate and practical education of the people.

Education is a way of empowering people; it opens up so many doors and is fundamental to everybody. And teachers are not often appreciated in the way that they should be.

I believe that the way to justice is education.

I became a teacher because I wanted to make a difference in people's lives.

Children can change the world.

Our only political stance is this: listen to these teachers.

I'm a teacher, so much of what I'm doing remains in the abstract. But I also support a lot of educational initiatives that support kids to really get out there and work hard in their communities. But I also think that we need poets in our country to inspire.

Three components - education, equality and empowerment - play an important and pivotal role in moving the country forward in every aspect.

I have seen the transformative effect that education has in the lives of young women and their communities.

There are lots of great educationalists out there who really care about social mobility.

My mom was a teacher. In the 1960s and '70s, she taught history at two largely African American public high schools in Washington, D.C. - McKinley Tech and H.D. Woodson. Her example taught me the importance of equality for all Americans.

I'm ready to do any kind of work, as long as it absorbs my passion for making a just world and equal world.

I had always insisted that a good education was a synthesis of book learning and involvement in social action, that each enriched the other. I wanted my students to know that the accumulation of knowledge, while fascinating in itself, is not sufficient as long as so many people in the world have no opportunity to experience that fascination.

At our best, we are all teachers