“America's favorite pastime is not baseball but giving unasked-for advice to new parents.”

“[The] overuse and misuse of standardized tests is only the start of the problems with NCLB. NCLB uses these test scores to impose sanctions that have no record of success as school improvement strategies, and in fact are not really educational strategies at all. They're political strategies designed to promote privatization and market reform in public education.”

“Suicide, I decided, hurt. A lot. Clearly, this had been a bad idea. I wouldn’t be trying that again.”

“you—you never gallop a horse homeward. They get all excited, thinking, ‘Woohoo, I’m about to get fed!’ and then they bolt for home and you can’t control them. Always walk a horse home.”

“Since the Civil War...the most unruly, the most independent, the most republican of American citizens have been the small farmer.”

“[The public school system is] usually a twelve year sentence of mind control.Crushing creativity, smashing individualism, encouraging collectivism andcompromise, destroying the exercise of intellectual inquiry, twisting itinstead into meek subservience to authority.”

“You know your vote doesn't count, but you go through the motions, because it's been drummed into your head that you might be the one person who makes a difference.”