“[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.”

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

“[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.”

“Though it is disguised by the illusion that a bureaucracy accountable to a majority of voters, and susceptible to the pressure of organized minorities, is not exercising compulsion, it is evident that the more varied and comprehensive the regulation becomes, the more the state becomes a despotic power as against the individual. For the fragment of control over the government which he exercises through his vote is in no effective sense proportionate to the authority exercised over him by the government.”

“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.”

“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.”