After two years at UCLA, I decided to leave. I was convinced that no amount of education would help a black man get a job.

For me, education was power.

I notice that young men go to the universities in order to become doctors or philosophers or anything, so long as it is a title, and that many go in for those professions who are utterly unfit for them, while others who would be very competent are prevented by business or their daily cares, which keep them away from letters.

Racism, xenophobia and unfair discrimination have spawned slavery, when human beings have bought and sold and owned and branded fellow human beings as if they were so many beasts of burden.

Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.

You can get help from teachers, but you are going to have to learn a lot by yourself, sitting alone in a room.

A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

Between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four, I must have read a whole library.

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

The internet could be a very positive step towards education, organisation and participation in a meaningful society.

A self-taught man usually has a poor teacher and a worse student.

Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down.

We are not to give credit to the many, who say that none ought to be educated but the free; but rather to the philosophers, who say that the well-educated alone are free.

I wasn’t very good in academics, but I could have been if I could have studied well. I was a smart kid.

Educate the masses, elevate their standard of intelligence, and you will certainly have a successful nation.

Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

Education is the leading of human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them.

My mother came from India to go to the University of California, Berkeley.

I think who you are in school really sticks with you.

George Bush doesn’t care about black people.

In this knowledge-worker age, it’s now increasingly tied to doing well in school so you can get into better grad schools so you can get better jobs – so the pressure to do well is really high.

I don’t believe in colleges and universities.

I was a smart kid, but I hated school.

Information is not knowledge.

Black people can be the most conservative, the most discriminating. Especially among ourselves. It wasn’t white people who said all black men have to wear baggy jeans.

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.

I should like to know if, taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, you begin making exceptions to it, where will you stop? If one man says it does not mean a Negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man?

Frivolity is inborn, conceit acquired by education.

I’m a good teacher and am great at observation and picking out what’s wrong and fixing it.

Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.

History has proven that each generation of Howard graduates will forge the way forward for our country and our world.

What nobler employment, or more valuable to the state, than that of the man who instructs the rising generation?

Knowledge is power.

Many interviewers when they come to talk to me, think they’re being progressive by not mentioning in their stories any longer that I’m black. I tell them, ‚Don’t stop now. If I shot somebody you’d mention it.‘

In terms of my involvement in ‚don’t ask, don’t tell‘ and marriage equality and anti-bullying and social emotional learning in schools – these are all things that arise out of my relationship with the world and with my fans.

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

Black people comprehend the South. We understand its weight. It has rested on our backs… I knew that my heart would break if ever I put my foot down on that soil, moist, still, with old hurts. I had to face the fear/loathing at its source or it would consume me whole.

Education is not a problem. Education is an opportunity.

Unfortunately, the highly curious student is a small percentage of the kids.

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

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.

When you walk into my classroom, I’m going to give it to you straight, just like in the real world, because that’s the only way to prepare you for the real world.

Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.

Creating whole departments of ethnic, gender, and other ‚studies‘ was part of the price of academic peace. All too often, these ‚studies‘ are about propaganda rather than serious education.

Too often we act – ask our schools to be truant officers, our teachers to be truant officers, because we’re giving them children who have, you know, they’re not ready to learn. And if they’re not ready to learn by the third grade, they know they’re behind.

The word ‚racism‘ is like ketchup. It can be put on practically anything – and demanding evidence makes you a ‚racist.‘

I want a president who will teach our children that everyone in this country matters, a president who truly believes in the vision that our Founders put forth all those years ago that we are all created equal, each a beloved part of the great American story.

Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.

We can’t afford not to educate girls and give women the power and the access that they need.

One of the very important characteristics of a student is to question. Let the students ask questions.

The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.

Genius without education is like silver in the mine.

I can find in my undergraduate classes, bright students who do not know that the stars rise and set at night, or even that the Sun is a star.

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.

A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.

Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning.

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

I think that all people who feel that there is injustice in the world anywhere should learn as much of it as they can bear. That is our duty.

Those who know how to think need no teachers.

The Sisters of Notre Dame at St. Aloysius Grade School influenced my life tremendously. This was due to the fact that they encouraged you always to make sure that God is the focus of your life, and they didn’t allow you to do anything except to the very best of your ability.