“Now, I have nothing against the public school system as it is presently organized, once you allow the humor of its basic assumption about how it is possible to teach things to children....”

“I hope that schools have changed since I was a little girl. My memory of the teaching of the public schools is that it showed the brutal incomprehension of children.”

“I like stories about supervillains. They teach children that you can accomplish great things even when the whole world is against you.”

“It's called Sunday school, but we are required to attend twice weekly: on Sunday before regular service and again on Wednesday evenings. There are two separate classes: one for children under ten, held in the classroom down the hall, to teach them basic prayers and the tenets of the Brotherhood's beliefs, and one for girls aged eleven to seventeen, to teach us about how wicked we are.”

“The public school system is not about educating black children. Never has been. Inner-city schools are about social control. Period. They’re operated as holding pens—miniature jails, really. It’s only when black children start breaking out of their pens and bothering white people that society even pays any attention to the issue of whether these children are being educated.”

“If you teach your children how to bully, or do nothing to stop them, teach them also how to die for their cause.”