Jonathan Kozol Quotes

It is important to be well read, at least a little bit.

I think that being read to every night is the reason why I was plowing through volume after volume of 'Nancy Drew' books all by myself by the time I reached the first grade. I loved stories. I loved the escape. I had a vivid imagination.

Journalism students need to understand it and need a solid background in the liberal arts, in sociology, economics, literature and language, because they won't get it later on.

I wrote the first book, and I thought people would say: 'Separate and unequal schools in the City of Boston? I didn't know that. Let's go out and fix it.'

I practice reading all the time. I read everything and having so many scripts to read, which really helps out as well.

I have never seen any good resulting from educating the Negro.

When I went to school, I was already reading and writing. In fact, I was offended that the other kids couldn't.

The manner in which I learned to read and write, not only had great influence on my own mind, as I acquired it with the most perfect ease, so much so, that I have no recollection whatever of learning the alphabet

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

I think writing and reading are completely synergistic; not necessarily in that one has to be a good reader to be a good writer or vice versa, but that they so inform each other.

I want children to learn to develop deep reading skills in the beginning in print. I believe the physicality of print is much better in the beginning for children, and then help them learn how to use their deep reading skills on digital medium.

I'm concerned, as I guess all middle-aged people are, about the younger generations' level of literacy.

I think that we need to have an honest conversation in this country. This idea that somehow we're beyond sexism, beyond racism is just wrong. And this is where having an honest conversation with white men about their issues and their concerns, and having honest conversations about the experiences that African-Americans are still having, despite who's the president of the United States, in the criminal justice system that we see in sentencing, we see in policing and a lot of these issues.

I really think that reading is just as important as writing when you're trying to be a writer because it's the only apprenticeship we have, it's the only way of learning how to write a story.

…she was discovering once again that reading and writing were not the same — you couldn't just soak it up then squeeze it out again.

Learning how to be a good reader is what makes you a writer.

If more people could read, write, and comprehend, we could be much closer to solving so many of the other problems our country faces today.

We need segregated buses... This is Obama's America.

I don't believe for a minute anybody allowed people to suffer because they are African Americans.

What was happening was the war on drugs. That was the primary culprit I could see that was getting in the way of black progress.

I started off believing all men were equal. I now know that's the most unlikely thing ever to have been... But by observation, reading, watching, arguing, asking, that is the conclusion I've come to.

It is only the Negro leadership, the bourgeois, hand-picked, handful of Negroes who think that they're going to get some kind of respect, recognition, or protection from the Government.

You have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this all while not appearing to.

Yet in our enthusiasm for the idea that everyone should be able to read and write fluently, we may be missing a crucial point: in today's culture, finely honed literacy skills are simply not as important as they once were.

If we continue to tell ourselves the popular myths about racial progress or, worse yet, if we say to ourselves that the problem of mass incarceration is just too big, too daunting for us to do anything about and that we should instead direct our energies to battles that might be more easily won, history will judge us harshly. A human rights nightmare is occurring on our watch.