Kinky Friedman Quotes

We need to increase education budgets.

The education cuts in the President's budget are both irresponsible and morally unjustifiable.

Real Texans want their kids to have the best education possible, not the one politicians looking to brag about budget cuts have left us with.

We're first on executions. We're 49th in funding public education. We're in a race with Mississippi for the bottom, and we're winning.

All around the United States of America - in the cities and the counties - our public education is suffering and has been suffering. Cuts, cuts, cuts.

What the North is sending down for our schools is not money but dynamite. This education is ruining our negroes. They’re demanding equality.

The problems of public schools will not be solved by cutting off the source of their funding, which is what vouchers are.

The sheltering of upper income children in private schools not only accelerates the deterioration of public education, it hides its consequences from precisely those people who could do something about it.

Public schooling is welfare for the middle class.

This question of free text books in public schools seems to me one that should be given more consideration than has been done in the past. New York City provides them, individual towns and villages do the same, but the vast number of rural schools, particularly in poorer districts, put the burden on the parents to buy the books the children need.

I grew up in a very progressive family and with a great educational system, and I asked myself, 'Why doesn't everybody have these opportunities for a good education? So why not give back to these kids who didn't grow up with the same privileges I had?'

The people of Missouri said they expect their elected leaders to support public schools because they know that education is the best economic development tool there is.

I am going to put money into education at the expense of other programs.

There is no more reason to pay for private education than there is to pay for a private swimming pool for those who do not use public facilities.

Take Hispanic voters. They favor Democrats because they like the party's programs, from health care reform to government spending on education. It's not because the Republicans don't have a big enough Office of Hispanic Outreach.

I have no problems with private schools. I graduated from one and so did my mother. Private schools are useful and we often use public funds to pay for their infrastructures and other common needs.

It is fast becoming an article of political faith that financing America's public schools by way of the local property tax is a shame and a civic scandal.

We really shouldn't be running education like a supermarket where you compare prices.

What began to weigh heavily upon me was that at the same time I was struggling to get my scholars and their families to believe in themselves, I was part of an educational system that despite its best intentions, only reinforced their failures.

The federal government has a very limited role in the schools…It’s the ‘he who has the gold makes the rules’ principle. The federal government only pays 8 percent of the school costs. The state and local government, 92 percent… Our federal role in education has been the needs of the neediest students.

We tax the people in Watts to send the children of Beverly Hills to college.

The number one issue facing cities isn’t crimes or jobs anymore, it’s public education.

The public schools are supported entirely, in most communities, by public funds—funds exacted not only from parents, nor alone from those who hold particular religious views, nor indeed from those who subscribe to any creed at all.

We still have two public school systems in the United States: One for the haves and one for the have-nots.

Savage Inequalities