“America’s education system has become less a ladder of opportunity than a structure to transmit inequity from one generation to the next.”

“Will you ever be anything more than a vessel transmitting the genes and memes of previous generations on to the next?”

“The tender sentiment of the 'one and only' has less to do with constancy of heart than with singleness of opportunity.”

“Whatever the one generation may learn from the other, that which is genuinely human no generation learns from the foregoing...Thus no generation has learned from another to love, no generation begins at any other point than at the beginning, no generation has a shorter task assigned to it than had the previous generation.”

“As time passes, the system becomes less and less well-ordered. Sooner or later the fixing cease to gain any ground. Each forward step is matched by a backward one. Although in principle usable forever, the system has worn out as a base for progress. ...A brand-new, from-the-ground-up redesign is necessary.”

“Overwhelming and astounding inequality,especially when it has an element of the unattainable, arouses far less envy than minimal inequality, which inevitably causes the envious to think: I might have been in his place.”