Richard Lamm Quotes

Brown versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person's problem.

What we, as black people, need to do is we need to worry about our education.

I look back and see the kids who made it through school - it made a huge difference in their lives, which made me believe in the power of public education and what it can do for individuals and communities and the state.

We need to take responsibility and educate people. That's why black folks don't like me. I always say it's our responsibility to make safe neighborhoods. It's our job to get them cleaned up.

Progress for black Americans depends on good schools because education is the last great equalizer.

Martin Luther King was a misguided leader. He worked to be recognized as the leader of black America, when what black America needs isn't a leader - it is education. Giving speeches and marching - that's not the concept that brings about real freedom, equality and justice.

Thomas Sowell, among many others, has articulated the power of individual responsibility as an antidote to black poverty for over 40 years. Black thinkers as far back as Frederick Douglas and Booker T. Washington have done the same.

Black people cannot look to government to solve their problems.

You can't delete racism. It's like a cigarette. You can't stop smoking if you don't want to, and you can't stop racism if people don't want to. But I'll do everything I can to help.

When I took the SAT, I didn't get accepted into a single white school that I applied to. Now I've got honorary degrees from a lot of those schools that rejected me. Things are different now, but not that much different.

Good education, housing and jobs are imperatives for the Negroes, and I shall support them in their fight to win these objectives, but I shall tell the Negroes that while these are necessary, they cannot solve the main Negro problem.

I think African Americans are resilient and hustlers by nature. I think they need to understand that you can take that hustle to the boardroom, but it has to be an education process.

During the decades after Brown v. Board of Education there was terrific progress. Tens of thousands of public schools were integrated racially. During that time the gap between black and white achievement narrowed.

You can't rise as a class. You have to rise individually. It's what many of the civil rights-era people don't understand.

Public education is an investment in our future.

Martin Luther King was a misguided leader. He worked to be recognized as the leader of black America when what black America needs isn't a leader, it is education.

Governmental intervention and personal responsibility are not mutually exclusive issues, but they do frame a 'do it ourselves' vs. 'what are you doing for us' debate. For the black community, that's a debate that's been raging at least as far back as the W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington philosophical grudge matches.

The average Nigerian person has come to reconcile himself with the fact that his or her social progress remain essentially in his or her hands in collaboration with other fellow Nigerians and not merely relying on what government alone could provide for him or her.

In the hands of the Negro teacher rests the destiny of the race.

Don't terrorize. Organize. Don't burn. Give kids a chance to learn ... The real answer to race problems in this country is education. Not burning and killing. Be ready. Be qualified. Own something. Be somebody. That's Black Power.

If this boy passes the examination, he will be admitted; and if the white students choose to withdraw, all of the income of the college will be devoted to his education.

The abolition of the separate school system in the south raises serious practical problems.... We face the abolition of the public school system. Boldness is essential but wisdom is indispensable.

The United States Office of Education has likewise been guilty of spreading racial equality propaganda. In a report to the press, Dr. John W. Studebaker, head of the Office of Education, and his Negro assistant, Dr. Ambrose Caliver, who is racial adviser in the office of Education, called upon the colleges and universities of the South to open their doors to Negro students

The three most important things our Black people need for his health are education, education and education.

In approaching this problem [school desegregation], we cannot turn the clock back...