Jonathan Kozol Quotes

The thing that really struck me when I went to junior high was class. I grew up on a pretty poor street, but the school district I was in included some fine neighborhoods - so I got to know a couple of the kids from those places and went to their houses and experienced such culture shock.

The rich are few everywhere, the poor many.

Wealth often takes away chances from men as well as poverty. There is none to tell the rich to go on striving, for a rich man makes the law that hallows and hollows his own life.

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

We live in a very unequal society.

In fact, the class divide in the black community is now seen by some as a permanent aspect of our existence.

Class certainly loomed large in Katrina's aftermath. Blacks of means escaped the tragedy; blacks without them suffered and died. In reality, it is how race and class interact that made the situation for the poor so horrible on the Gulf Coast. The rigid caste system that punishes poor blacks and other minorities also targets poor whites.

An imbalance between the rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

You can have class in the ghetto and trash in the White House.

The rich are always advising the poor, but the poor seldom return the compliment.

It wasn't until sixth grade, at P.S. 168, when my teacher took us on a field trip to her house that I realized we were poor. I have no idea what my teacher's intentions were - whether she was trying to inspire us or if she actually thought visiting her Manhattan brownstone with her view of Central Park qualified as a school trip.

Going in and out of a proverbial 'poor door' - a separate entrance for income-restricted residents of mixed-income housing - of your city every day has its costs, even if the 'poor door' woman would be considered affluent in another location.

It is easy to say that there are the rich and the poor, and so something should be done. But in history, there are always the rich and the poor. If the poor were not as poor, we would still call them the poor. I mean, whoever has less can be called the poor. You will always have the 10% that have less and the 10% that have the most.

American computer science grads often have very little exposure to the human condition. They've rarely had manual labor or service jobs. They grow up in a bubble of privilege lulled into thinking this country is a true meritocracy.

A lot of the things that we think of as being racial differences are really class differences in America.

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

Choice dependent on wealth; those are the Tory words.

I think the rich are too rich and the poor are too poor. I don't think the black people are going to rise at all; I think most of them are going to die.

The benefit of rich families putting their child through Harvard is always going to exist. But it's quite evident that there are 700 million peasants in China who are never going to go to Harvard.

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

This society cannot go forward, the way we have been going forward, where the gap between the rich and the poor keeps growing. It's not politically viable; it's not morally right; it's just not going to happen.

The black population now consists of two distinct classes-the middle class and the poor.

I think greed is a critical problem - the gap between the poor and the rich. The gap between the top 10 percent and the bottom 10 percent.

We're running out of rich people in this country.

The rich are staying in school, and the poor are being drafted. I can't live with that.