Eric Liu Quotes

We can't accept that it's O.K. if only some kids get to go to college.

Until we get equality in education, we won’t have an equal society.

As more and more minority groups fill our nation's classrooms, what can we do to even the separate-but-forever-unequal playing field? Now that's a question many very smart people have spent decades trying to answer.

We should get rid of the SAT as fast as we can. Look, there are bigger problems in society. This is not the biggest problem we have. But it's so easy to get rid of it. Right? Just pull the plug.

Until we're educating every kid in a fantastic way, until every inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do.

I believe that education is the greatest equalizer; thus, I will continue to fight to equalize the playing field in an educational atmosphere that is not always level!

There's no reason why children in inner cities or rural areas do not receive the same quality education or opportunities as those in suburbs or wealthy neighborhoods. If we truly believe in giving all citizens a chance to pursue happiness and pursue their goals, then we cannot continue to marginalize entire groups of people.

I had no need to apologize that the look-wider, search-more affirmative action that Princeton and Yale practiced had opened doors for me. That was its purpose: to create the conditions whereby students from disadvantaged backgrounds could be brought to the starting line of a race many were unaware was even being run.

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.

The lack of diversity in higher education is a problem we as a country must tackle if we're going to live up to our promise.

Early admission programs tend to advantage the advantaged.

Teach For America would not be able to continue recruiting and developing an ever-more diverse and impactful group of corps members and alumni if the nation's leading colleges become even less diverse.

The prime culprit in causing contemporary social inequality seems to be merit.

Without affirmative action I could never have attended Yale University. Without affirmative action Barack Obama would never have gotten into Colombia and Harvard Law school

Sixty years after Brown v. Board of Education, it's time for us to take a hard look at the separate and unequal conditions that still exist in our schools and our communities and rededicate ourselves to fulfilling the promise of equal opportunity for all.

Our admissions system should be a vehicle for justice, but it is failing working-class students, especially those who are the first in their family to go to university.

My job is making sure that every child gets a good school place. If there is a particular disadvantage to a community, you invest more. Because that's the Labour way.

If you think about it, an unfair society is a society that makes it possible for you to exploit your abilities to the limit.

I believe in free education, free healthcare. But I do not believe in equality.

My wife and I have been passionate about education being a gateway for upward mobility and equality.

Even Milton Friedman - doyen of radical free market thought - was willing to consider some government intervention into primary education on the grounds that it is unfair for children to not get a chance in life because they were born to poor parents.

Schools are the single largest lever of mobility in this country. When we commit to creating and enforcing laws that acknowledge the injustice of the past, we open up the possibility of using schools as a means of reducing inequality.

We can read reams of social justice literature without encountering a single example of the proportional representation of different groups in endeavors open to competition—in any country in the world today, or at any time over thousands of years of recorded history.

If you're going to compare a middle-income black kid with a middle- income white kid, and, say, you control for family background, family education, and family income, and if this middle-income black kid doesn't score as well as the white kid on the test, then I say, look, you haven't taken into consideration the cumulative effect of living in a segregated neighborhood and going to a de facto segregated school. You're denying a position at Harvard or some other place to a kid that really could make it. That's why I support affirmative action that's based on both class and race.

You know, you work hard but play by the rules, you can rise. You can do well. That's what we're taught. That's what we believe. That's what we think of as America. Problem is, there are just generations of people in this country who do not think that.