Inspirational Quotes

"Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner."
-- James Bovard, Civil Libertarian (1994)

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
-- Martin Luther King Jr.

"Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion. "
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower

“The people with very hard problems are understood by God. He knows what wretched machines they are trying to drive. Some day he will fling them away and give those people new ones; then they may astonish everyone, for they learned their driving in a hard school. Some of the last will be first and some of the first will be last.”
-- C.S. Lewis, “Mere Christianity”

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
---Mahatma Gandhi

“When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”
– Thomas Jefferson

”Our challenge is not to educate the children we used to have or want to have, but to educate the children who come to the schoolhouse door." 
-- H. G. Wells

“Dogs don’t bark at parked cars.”
-- Lynne Cheney, wife of Dick Cheney.

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."
-- Albert Einstein

"No man in the wrong can stand up against a fellow that’s in the right and keeps on a-comin’ ”
 --was the motto of Texas Ranger Bill McDonald (1852-1918). It later became a motto for the Texas Rangers themselves.

"The purpose of education is not to endow students with diplomas, but to equip them with the substantive knowledge and skills they need to succeed in life. A high school diploma is not an education, any more than a birth certificate is a baby."
-- Presiding Justice Ignazio J. Ruvolo, O’Connell,  et  al. v. Superior Court of Alameda County, 47 Cal. Rptr.3d 147, 167 (Cal. App. 2006). (Appellate court required trial court to vacate its preliminary injunction against the California State Board of Education, preventing the State Board from denying diplomas to members of the 2006 graduating class who had not passed both portions of the California High School Exit Exam but were otherwise eligible to graduate.)

"There is no more powerful advocate than a parent armed with information and options."

-- Rod Paige, Secretary of Education

"Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless."

-- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."

-- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"When you are wrestling with a gorilla, you don’t stop when you are tired; you stop when the gorilla is tired."

-- Robert Strauss

"The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for (good) people to do nothing."

-- Edmund Burke

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world of full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."

-- Calvin Coolidge

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

-- Maya Angelou

"Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute."

-- Proverbs 31:8


"The highest result of education is tolerance."

-- Helen Keller


“A child miseducated is a child lost.”

-- John F. Kennedy

“Never wrestle with a pig; you both get dirty, and the pig likes it.”

-- Anonymous

“Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.”

-- Doris Lessing

“Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us, there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation.”

--John F. Kennedy

“Children cannot lobby and cannot vote. We must speak for them.”

-- Marian Wright Edelman, children’s advocate

"Regardless of how good of a swim instructor you are, you can't teach a person to swim in the parking lot of a swimming pool."

-- Norman Kunc

“Fact is often stranger than fiction because most writers of fiction try to make their stories plausible.”

-- Judge Richard A. Posner, Kijonka v. Seitzinger, et al., 363 F.3d 645, 646 (7th Cir. 2004).

“He who fights monsters should look into it that he himself does not become a monster. When you gaze long into the Abyss, the Abyss also gazes into you.”

-- Friedrich Nietzche


“There can be no equal justice where the kind of trial a man gets depends on the amount of money he has.”

-- U.S. Supreme Court

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