c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I am an educated black woman in a time when educated black people will be called upon to risk everything for the rights of black people everywhere.
— Allan Dare Pearce, Paris in April
Mankind being originally equals in the order of creation, the equality could only be destroyed by some subsequent circumstance; the distinctions of rich, and poor, may in a great measure be accounted for, and that without having recourse to the harsh, ill-sounding names of oppression and avarice.
— Thomas Paine, Common Sense
Make your life a tribute equal to the magnitude of the gift of life.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
It's not equality that counts, it's reprocity that counts. Love is not like a balance sheet. There's no such thing as double-entry accounting when it comes to love.
— Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know  About Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind
We are free, but we are not equal. We are free, but not as free as other people in this land are free.
— Allan Dare Pearce, Paris in April
But, ladies and gentlemen, we will also be asked to make sacrifices in matters that are not our affair and that do not concern us, sacrifices that would leave our people bleeding or wounded, or even dead, from battle. There is no equality for us in this lifetime.
— Allan Dare Pearce, Paris in April
A person who has the power to take a life, should have the intelligence to choose not to.
— Christian Ekström
To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages that today determine success...with a society that provides opportunities for all.
— Malcolm Gladwell
The fundamental Law of The Universe states that all human beings are fundamentally the same and therefore have an equal right to live in equality.
— Anthony   Pan
Here we are,Arms in arms,Hearts to heartsWaiting in a haunted stop,For the sky to fall,When the world ends to a knot,We will rise into one. 
— Thilsath
It doesn't matter who you are. Everyone's fear is equal.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Right is of no sex, Truth is of no color, God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren
— Frederick Douglass
And she didn't judge nobody. She loved everyone equal- accountants, queers, musicians, she welcomed us all, said we were all idiots just the same.
— Ruta Sepetys, Out of the Easy
The past week, Mother had denied her a pass to the market for some minor, forgettable reason, and she’d taken it hard. Her market excursions were the acme of her days, and trying to commiserate, I'd said, “I'm sorry, Handful, I know how you must feel.” It seemed to me I did know what it felt to have one's liberty curtailed, but she blazed up at me. “So we just the same, me and you? That's why you the one to shit in the pot and I'm the one to empty it?
— Sue Monk Kidd, The Invention of Wings
I can't understand why dark northern soldiers and light ones are seperated into different brigades. The dead are all buried together in hasty mass graves, bones touching.
— Margarita Engle, The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom
The beauty of the infantry is its ability to truly teach tolerance. At the lowest level, when it is simply a matter of survival to count on everyone around you, regardless of religion or skin color, the only logical option is to ignore the differences.
— Adam Fenner
In my experience, desire is desire, love is love. I have never fallen in love with a gender.I have fallen for individuals. I know this is hard for people to do, but I don't understand why it's so hard, when it's so obvious.
— David Levithan, Every Day
Y’know, it’s not that we need equality. Because everyone’s already equal, it’s just that a ton of idiots lost the memo. Indeed, everyone just needs to be TREATED like the equal they already are.
— Ellie Rose McKee
Until the War, we claimed to be equal; simpletons, some say, but equal man to man.
— Allan Dare Pearce, Paris in April
We ought to be free to meet and mingle, --to rise by our individual worth, without any consideration of caste or color; and they who deny us this right are false to their own professed principals of human equality.
— Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
I had no need to apologize that the look-wider, search-more affirmative action that Princeton and Yale practiced had opened doors for me. That was its purpose: to create the conditions whereby students from disadvantaged backgrounds could be brought to the starting line of a race many were unaware was even being run.
— Sonia Sotomayor, My Beloved World
Periapólí can only become the greatest city in the world if every boy and girl is born into a life where anything is possible.
— Michael Oehley, The 4 Powers of Daren Saner
Where there is true variety, there will be inevitable 'inequality' - that is simply the result of human nature and the pluralism that defines us as a people.
— Cory Bernardi, The Conservative Revolution
Stalin was the most audible and powerful spokesman in the campaign against what he contemptuously called uravnilovka (leveling). His hostility - voiced in sarcastic and dismissive terms - was so deep and so clearly enunciated that it rapidly became state policy and social doctrine. He believed in productive results, not through spontaneity or persuasion, but through force, hierarchy, reward, punishment, and above all differential wages. He applied this view to the whole of society. Stalin's anti-egalitarianism was not born of the five-year plan era. He was offended by the very notion and used contemptuous terms such as "fashionable leftists", "blockheads", "petty bourgeois nonsense" and "silly chatter," thus reducing the discussion to a sweeping dismissal of childish, unrealistic, and unserious promoters of equality. The toughness of the delivery evoked laughter of approval from his audience.
— Richard Stites
A fair and just society offers equality of opportunity to all. But it cannot promise, and should not try to enforce, sameness.
— Christina Hoff Sommers
Candor is a compliment
—  it implies equality. It's how true friends talk.
Whoever claims any right that he is unwilling to accord to his fellow-men is dishonest and infamous.
— Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child
Equality is a myth to protect the weak. some of us are strong in the Force, others are not. Only a fool believes otherwise.
— Drew Karpyshyn, Path of Destruction
When all men give to all others all the rights they claim for themselves, this world will be civilized.
— Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child
Every man should stand under the blue and stars, under the infinite flag of nature, the peer of every other man.
— Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child
What hurts me is the fact that in India, a good doctor is one whom you have to take an appointment with even before you fall sick. Else, you will die but not get treated. A good school is one that won't admit you even if you are in Lower Kindergarten. A good minister is one won't meet you till are some VIP. I want to change this in my lifetime by democratizing education and opportunities.
— Sharad Vivek Sagar
It is difficult to exaggerate the adverse influence of the precepts and practices of religion upon the status and happiness of woman. Owing to the fact that upon women devolves the burden of motherhood, with all its accompanying disabilities, they always have been, and always must be, at a natural disadvantage in the struggle of life as compared with men....With certain exceptions, women all the world over have been relegated to a position of inferiority in the community, greater or less according to the religion and the social organisation of the people; the more religious the people the lower the status of the women...
— Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner
If I’m going to be a student here, treated on equal terms, then I have to be willing to do everything that they do,” I said. “There can’t be two sets of expectations, one for them and one for me, the only girl in the class. How will I earn their esteem if I don’t pose?
— Sharon Biggs Waller, A Mad, Wicked Folly
Many people in Nixon’s camp had genuine faith in affirmative action. It wasn’t designed to fail, but it wasn’t designed to succeed, either; the intent behind it was not rooted in a desire to help black people attain equal standing in society. It was riot insurance. It was a financial incentive for blacks to stay in their own communities and out of the suburbs. (183)
— Tanner Colby, Some of My Best Friends Are Black: The Strange Story of Integration in America
Even the poorest among us deserves the dignity of equality.
— The Prophet of Life
Money is the most egalitarian force in society. It confers power on whoever holds it.
— Roger Starr
It's never ok to hit a girl. Never. Not even if she cheats on you. A girl is not your property. She's a human being. She is just as important as you. She is your equal. And her wishes and feelings are just as valid as yours. All you can do is treat her nice, and hope she wants to be with you. If she chooses to be with you, great! If not, or if she chooses to leave you at some point, you have to let her go. You have no right to stop her. You don't own her, and you don't have the right to tell her what to do. She's your partner. Not your servant, not your sex slave, and not your punching bag.
— Oliver Markus, Sex and Crime: Oliver's Strange Journey
The division is based on knowledge, based on qualifications - but as I learned from the factionless, a system that relies on a group of uneducated people to do its dirty work without giving them a way to rise is hardly fair.
— Veronica Roth, Allegiant
I come to the understanding that maybe what was on the inside was more important, and that your outer covering didn't count so much as folks thought it did, colored or white, man or woman.
— James McBride, The Good Lord Bird
There can have been no doubt in Eleanor's mind as to what was expected of her as a wife. In her day, women were supposed to be chaste both inside and outside marriage, virginity and celibacy being highly prized states. When it came to fornication, women were usually apportioned the blame, because they were the descendants of Eve, who had tempted Adam in the Garden of Eden, with such dire consequences. Women, the Church taught, were the weaker vessel, the gateway to the Devil, and therefore the source of all lechery. St. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote: "To live with a woman without danger is more difficult than raising the dead to life." Noblewomen, he felt, were the most dangerous so fall. Women were therefore kept firmly in their place in order to prevent them from luring men away from the paths of righteousness. Promiscuity--and its often inevitable consequence, illicit pregnancy--brought great shame upon a woman and her family, and was punishable by fines, social ostracism, and even, in the case of aristocratic and royal women, execution. Unmarried women who indulged in fornication devalued themselves on the marriage market. In England, women who were sexually experienced were not permitted to accuse men of rape in the King's court. Female adultery was seen as a particularly serious offence, since it jeopardized the laws of inheritance. Men, however, often indulged in casual sex and adultery with impunity. Because the virtue of high-born women was jealously guarded, many men sought sexual adventures with lower-class women. Prostitution was common and official brothels were licensed and subject to inspection in many areas. There was no effective contraception apart from withdrawal, and the Church frowned upon that anyway: this was why so many aristocratic and royal bastards were born during this period.
— Alison Weir, Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life
I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties. And quite frankly, I don't see much of a distinction beyond that.
— Joe Biden
Imagine for a just a moment, if you will, that the slaves who were brought to America weren’t dark-skinned. Instead, white people and black people were both the same neutral skin color. The only way that slave holders were able to tell the slaves apart from themselves was by marking them in some manner, like a brand or something. After Abolition, when former slaves had children they were no longer given marks to tell them apart from anyone else. Imagine now that illegal Mexicans who sneak into America in hopes of making a better life for their families are this same neutral skin color, just like “white” people and “black” people. There is no concrete way to tell them apart from anyone else except that they might sound different. But once they have children who sound just like everyone else there is no concrete way to tell them apart from the “natives.” As human beings, we naturally find ways to categorize ourselves. The very first thing that we do when we see a person is compare their appearance to our own. We use an internal ranking system. Maybe it’s time to consciously abandon our internal ranking system. The only way to achieve true equality is through colorblindness. Let’s try a little harder and see what happens.
— Aaron B. Powell, Quixotic
Perhaps the Queen's prayers, and those of Bernard, had been efficacious, or perhaps Louise had been more attentive in bed, for during 1145--the exact date is not recorded--she bore a daughter, who was named Marie in honour of the Virgin. If the infant was not the male heir to France so desired by the King--the Salic law forbade the succession of females to the throne--her arrival encouraged the royal parents to hope for a son in the future.  Relationships between aristocratic parents and children were rarely close. Queens and noblewomen did not nurse their own babies, but handed them over at birth into the care of wet nurses, leaving themselves free to become pregnant again.
— Alison Weir, Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life
The capacity to do something horrible to someone who doesn't deserve it is there in everyone, human or hybrid. Being human doesn't make you any less likely to kill someone; being hybrid any more.
— Addison Lane, Drowning Fergus
Digital publishing allows an author a new platform for which the words of one heart can be shared with all souls of the world.
— Molly Friedenfeld
Life is Most Important in Life is The Most important Truth in Life. Any word, thought, or action that disagrees must be a lie.
— David Wishengrad
HIGGINS. The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.
— George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion
It is often attempted to palliate slavery by comparing the state of slaves with our poorer countrymen: if the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin; but how this bears on slavery, I cannot see; as well might the use of the thumb-screw be defended in one land, by showing that men in another land suffered from some dreadful disease. Those who look tenderly at the slave owner, and with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put themselves into the position of the latter; what a cheerless prospect, with not even a hope of change! picture to yourself the chance, ever hanging over you, of your wife and your little children — those objects which nature urges even the slave to call his own — being torn from you and sold like beasts to the first bidder! And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth! It makes one's blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty...
— Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle
His own exclamation: “Women should be free—as free as we are,” struck to the root of a problem that it was agreed in his world to regard as nonexistent. “Nice” women, however wronged, would never claim the kind of freedom he meant, and generous-minded men like himself were therefore—in the heat of argument—the more chivalrously ready to concede it to them. Such verbal generosities were in fact only a humbugging disguise of the inexorable conventions that tied things together and bound people down to the old pattern.
— Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
Am I sitting here now, months later, in Los Angeles, writing all this down, because I want my life to matter? Maybe so. But I don't want it to matter more than others. I want to remember, or to learn, how to live as if it matters, as if they all matter, even if they don't.
— Maggie Nelson, The Red Parts
The first commendment of hte post 1970s meritocracy can be sumed up as follows: "Thou shall provide equality of opportunity to all, regardless of race, gender, or sexual oritentation, but worry not about equality of outcomes." But what we've seen time and time again is that the two aren't so neatly separated. If you don't concern yourself at all with equality fo outcomes, you will, over time, produce a system with horrendous inequality of opportunity. This is the paradox of meritocracy: It can only truly come to flower in a society that starts out with a relatively high degree of equality. So if you want meritocracy, work for equality. Because it is only in a society which values equality of actual outcomes, one that promotes the commonweal and social solidarity, that equal opportunity and earned mobility can flourish.
— Christopher L. Hayes, Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy
We are the children of one creator. We are different in some ways. Yet, we are equal.
— Ellen J. Barrier
God created us all with his love, to be equally treated.No human being is superior over another.
— Ellen J. Barrier
Christian equality can be described as equity, or even-handedness. Egalitarianism, in contrast, demands sameness, or equality of outcome. These two visions of equality are about as comparable as dry and wet. Think of it in terms of ten teenage boys trying to dunk a basketball: equity means that they all face the same ten-foot standard, and only two them them can do it — equity thus usually means differences in outcome. Egalitarianism wants equality of outcome, and there is only one way to get that — lower the net. Sameness of outcome requires differences in the standards.
— Douglas Wilson, For a Glory and a Covering: A Practical Theology of Marriage
But sometimes...sometimes I wake with a mad thought in my head: What if that boy's life mattered as much as anyone else's, even Caesar's? What if I were offered a choice: to doom that boy to the misery of his fate, or to spare him, and by doing so, to wreck all Caesar's ambitions? I'm haunted by that thought - which is ridiculous! It's self-evident that Caesar matters infinitely more than that Gaulish boy; one stands poised to rule the world, and the other is a miserable slae, if he even still lives. Some men are great, others are insignificant, and it behooves those of us who are in-between to ally ourselves with the greatest and to despise the smallest. To even begin to imagine that the Gaulish boy maters as much as Caesar is to presume that some mystical quality resides in every man and makes his life equal to that of any other, and surely the lesson life teaches us is quite the opposite! In stength and intellect, men are anything but equal, and the gods lavish their attention on some more than on others.
— Steven Saylor, The Judgment of Caesar
Equality is to be found only in the spiritual dignity of man
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
EQUAL RIGHTS and FREE DISCUSSION will be fearlessly advocated and maintained. Sectarian dogmas or tenets will be investigated and compared.
— Abner Cole
People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.
— Rosa Parks
Gays, lesbians, straights, feminists, fascist pigs, communists, Hare Krishnas - none of them bother me. I don't care what banner they raise. But what I can't stand are hollow people. When I'm with them I just can't bare it, and wind up saying things I shouldn't.
— Haruki Murakami
Indeed, girls can be so in need of social approval that they confuse harassment for acceptance--thinking that any attention is better than none. Since many girls as well as boys buy the idea that sexual aggression and exploitation is normal masculine behavior, it may not even occur to them to demand to be treated as equals.
— Leora Tanenbaum, Slut!: Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation
Courage is knowing that you're beaten and forging ahead anyway.
— Zach Wahls, My Two Moms: Lessons of Love, Strength, and What Makes a Family
The pair smiled desperately at one another. And for the first time ever, despite the fact that everyone he knew - even the gods themselves - would condemn him for it, Jebel didn't think of Tel Hesani as a slave, but as an equal.
— Darren Shan, The Thin Executioner
I shake my head at my friend. “Not only is they lines, but you know good as I do where them lines be drawn.” Aibileen shakes her head. “I used to believe in em. I don’t anymore. They in our heads. People like Miss Hilly is always trying to make us believe they there. But they ain’t.
— Kathryn Stockett, The Help
I don't believe in a country where it's more acceptable to see two men holding guns than two men holding hands.
— Brian Whitaker, Unspeakable Love: Gay and Lesbian Life in the Middle East
I couldn’t figure out if it was fate or faith that had brought me there. How funny those two words sounded when paired together. One was the inevitable, something I could not change in my life, while the other was the hope and belief that I could. These two words were enemies of each other, and one of them was down right dangerous for a slave to have anywhere near his mind.
— Jay Grewal, A Slave to Want
Free your mind and free yourself from brand slavery.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
When we become acquainted with any person on a human level, even a great enemy, we begin to see that no person is really so different from ourselves.
— Bryant McGill
You're in the democratic West now, lady. Anybody's as good as anybody else as long as he's got the dough to prove it.
— Leslie Ford, The Devil's Stronghold
Sometimes, people call my way of speaking ranting. Why are you always ranting and screaming, they ask. But here’s the thing…the reason why I rant is because I am a voice for many women that cannot speak out to heads of state, UN officials, and those that influence systems of oppression. And so I rant. And I will not stop ranting until my mission of equality of all girls is achieved.
— Leymah Gbowee
At the end of the day I have many answers for it. It has to do with my mom, who was an extraordinary woman, and a great feminist. It has to do with the people in my life. It has to do with a lot of different things, but -- I don't know! Because I'm not just writing from the female characters for other people. I have a desire to see them in our culture -- that was not met for most of my childhood. Except occasionally by James Cameron. [From the 2011 San Diego Comic Con, in response to being asked why he writes strong female characters.]
— Joss Whedon
Woman must have her freedom, the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she will be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man’s attitude may be, that problem is hers — and before it can be his, it is hers alone. She goes through the vale of death alone, each time a babe is born. As it is the right neither of man nor the state to coerce her into this ordeal, so it is her right to decide whether she will endure it.
— Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race
We're not very different from one another, not different at all, in fact. We're all just people with the same needs, the same desires, the same feelings. It's a lie about us being different. It's something they cooked up so we'd be fighting one another instead of them, the ones who keep us down and make their fortunes off our labor, the same ones who send us off to war when they get to fighting among themselves over the spoils. You'll find that out someday. They'll be calling on you to go to war for them, you can be sure of that, because there's going to be lots more wars in the future. I got in one myself, as you know. I saw men getting killed and wounded and crippled, and I must have killed a lot of men myself, and I'm just sick every time I think of it. Why? Because we were fighting one another instead of those who'd sent us out there. Oh, they're clever, those capitalists. It's hard to beat them at their game. They've fooled us with words like patriotism and duty and honor, and they've got us divided up into classes and religions so that each one of us figures he's better than the other. But it'll all change, 'arry. Believe me, it will. People get smarter. The human brain has a potential for development. Someday it will grow big enough so that everybody will see and understand the truth, and then we won't act like a bunch of sheep, and then that wall that separates the two sides of our street will crumble.
— Harry Bernstein, The Invisible Wall: A Love Story That Broke Barriers
You ask me if I do not think that men are strange beings - I do indeed, I have often thought so - and I think too that the mode of bringing them up is strange, they are not half sufficiently guarded from temptation - Girls are protected as if they were something very frail and silly indeed while boys are turned loose on the world as if they - of all beings in existence, were the wisest and the least liable to be led astray.
— Charlotte Brontë
I support same-sex civil unions and I believe no should be denied their rights
— George W. Bush
When asked what gave her the strength and commitment to refuse segregation, (Rosa) Parks credited her mother and grandfather "for giving me the spirit of freedom... that I should not feel because of my race or color, inferior to any person. That I should do my very best to be a respectable person, to respect myself, to expect respect from others.
— Jeanne Theoharis, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks
That was when I realized we weren’t born to beslaves. It was ignorant for any man to think he could be the master of another. We were all meant to be free, and somewhere there were good people helping to heal this broken world.
— Jay Grewal, A Slave to Want
I oppose same-sex marriage but I would advance equal rights in employment for gay and lesbian people. I appointed a few judges who were gay and I had few people in my cabinet that I found out were gay. I never asked peoples sexual orientation.
— Mitt Romney
Equality has no place for genius.
— Allen Bloom
I oppose same-sex marriage and civil unions but I support domestic partnership between gay and lesbian couples. I have no problem with gay and lesbian couples adopting. I support equal benefits for same-sex couples such as hospital visitation rights
— Mitt Romney
But when they brought Sabira out, the crowd parted almost magically. A sea of hands rose faster than a swell and a bidding war commenced, amongst these civilized gentlemen who made their living off the backs of slaves.
— Jay Grewal, A Slave to Want
I believe music is a place everyone of us can go to. I don’t care who you are, where you were born, what you do with your life. Everyone can come here in music and be equal.
— Hayley Williams
Unseen University had never admitted women, muttering something about problems with the plumbing, but the real reason was an unspoken dread that if women were allowed to mess around with magic they would probably be embarrassingly good at it…
— Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic
Me being in love with a girl and wanting her to be with me, doing what I need to do to make her stay with me; it affects no one, yet it’s terrifying to people and they think you’re a monster.
— Sara Quin
We, gays, can get married in Canada. We let heterosexuals too, but that was a huge thing, we had to have a referendum and a vote, it’s crazy! But then we were like, if they want to get married.. that’s cool. That’s gonna destroy their relationships, but.. Heterosexuals deserve the same rights as homosexuals.
— Tegan Quin
No matter whether you’re a gay or a mixed race couple; when you’re drawn together, ultimately it doesn’t matter what everybody thinks because it’s so honest, true, and sincere. How can that be wrong?
— Tegan Quin
Next year, Equality Now will celebrate - if that’s the word - will clock its twentieth year. Two decades of fighting the good fight, fighting the cause, and in case I haven’t been the clear, the cause is that one half of the human race is given the same basic equal rights that the other half enjoys.Or, not given. Given back.That is not a milestone, twenty years, that I intend to go unnoticed. I want to make some noise. I want to make a joyful noise, I want to make too much noise. I want the neighbors to complain. I’m tired of being polite about something that matters so much.
— Joss Whedon
Misogyny… is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who is confronted with it.
— Joss Whedon
A commitment to sexual equality with men is a commitment to becoming the rich instead of the poor, the rapist instead of the raped, the murderer instead of the murdered.
— Andrea Dworkin
The American white relegates the black to the rank of shoeshine boy
—  and he concludes from this that the black is good for nothing but shining shoes.
And the person who says that the only way to please them is to restrict options for others is, if you ask me, the one who deserves it least. And that’s my opinion, expressed as politely as possible.
— David Gaider
A certain simplicity of thought is common to serene souls at both ends of the social scale.
— Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent
It's easier to floss with barbed wire than admit you like someone in middle school.
— Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak
Don't forget to give Neville our love!' Ginny told James as she hugge
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
A long time ago, there was no such thing as school, and children spent their days learning a trade, a phrase which here means "standing around doing tedious tasks under the instruction of a bossy adult." In time, however, people realized that the children could be allowed to sit, and the first school was invented.
— Lemony Snicket, Horseradish
If I were to draw on a paper what gym does for me, I would make one dot and then I would erase it.
— Elizabeth Berg, Joy School
My English teacher has no face. She has uncombed stringy hair that droops on her shoulders. The hair is black from her part to her ears and then neon orange to the frizzy ends. I can't decide if she had pissed off her hairdresser or is morphing into a monarch butterfly. I call her Hairwoman.
— Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak
As you can see, I have memorized this utterly useless piece of information long enough to pass a test question. I now intend to forget it forever. You’ve taught me nothing except how to cynically manipulate the system. Congratulations.
— Bill Watterson
it's back to school time. or as home-schoolers call it, stay-where-you-are time.
— Stephen Colbert
She is a loner, too bright for the slutty girls and too savage for the bright girls, haunting the edges and corners of the school like a sullen disillusioned ghost
— Eleanor Catton, The Rehearsal
There was nothing like a Saturday - unless it was the Saturday leading up to the last week of school and into summer vacation. That of course was all the Saturdays of your life rolled into one big shiny ball.
— Nora Roberts, Rising Tides
One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year.
— Albert Einstein
The idea for Maximum Ride come from the earlier books of mine called When the Wind Blows and The Lake House, which also feature a character named Max who escapes from a quiet despicable school. Most of the similarities end there. Max and the other kids in Maximum Ride are not the same Max and kids featured in those two books. nor do Frannie and Kit play any part in Maximum Ride. I hope you enjoy the ride anyways. 
— James Patterson
Mom, is the world coming to an end?" Jonny asked, picking up the plate of cookies and ramming one into his mouth."No, it isn'T," Mom said, folding her lawn chair and carrying it to the front of the house. "And yes, you do have to go to school tomorrow.
— Susan Beth Pfeffer, Life As We Knew It
As we approached each other, the noise and the students around us melted away and we were utterly alone, passing, smiling, holding each other's eyes, floors and walls gone, two people in a universe of space and stars.
— Jerry Spinelli
Once in a while our school has half days, and the teachers spend the afternoon 'in service,' which I think must be a group therapy for having to deal with us.
— Neal Shusterman, Bruiser
Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Just don't take any class where you have to read BEOWULF.
— Woody Allen
What teachers and the administration in that era never seemed to see was that the mental work of what they called daydreaming often required more effort and concentration than it would have taken simply to listen in class. Laziness is not the issue. It is just not the work dictated by the administration.
— David Foster Wallace, Oblivion
High School: Oh, man. This is where boys and girls go from tweens to teens and become complicated and cruel. Girls play sick mind games; boys try to pull each other's penises off and throw them in the bushes. If you can, buy the most expensive jeans in a two-hundred-mile radius of your town and wear them on your first day. If anyone asks how you could afford them say that your father is the president of Ashton Kutcher. When they are like, 'Ashton Kutcher has a president?' answer, 'Yes.' Everyone will be in awe of you and you won't have to go through a lot of pain and cat fights.
— Eugene Mirman, The Will to Whatevs: A Guide to Modern Life
Because we were a poor area, the school had a small budget and was unable to teach the second half of the alphabet.
— George Carlin, Brain Droppings
Because whipping an atlas at Jackson's head while he was flirt-touching that Frankie girl in geography would have been very satisfying. And beating him with the Eiffel Tower snowglobe while he kissed Cleo in French would have been tres cathartic. But she hadn't. Instead she'd been egg-like: a hard shell on the outside, and a runny mess on the inside.
— Lisi Harrison, Monster High
I said school starts tomorrow. I didn’t say I was going to be there.
— Kim Harrison
Do you know how to pick a lock?""Not in the least, I'm afraid.""I often wonder what we go to school for," said Wimsey.
— Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison
You go on, I presume, with your latin Exercises: and I wish to hear of your beginning upon Sallust who is one of the most polished and perfect of the Roman Historians, every Period of whom, and I had almost said every Syllable and every Letter is worth Studying.In Company with Sallust, Cicero, Tacitus and Livy, you will learn Wisdom and Virtue. You will see them represented, with all the Charms which Language and Imagination can exhibit, and Vice and Folly painted in all their Deformity and Horror.You will ever remember that all the End of study is to make you a good Man and a useful Citizen.—This will ever be the Sum total of the Advice of your affectionate Father,John Adams
— John  Adams, The Letters of John and Abigail Adams
I couldn’t help but think about school and everything else ending. I liked standing just outside the couches and watching them—it was a kind of sad I didn’t mind, and so I just listened, letting all the happiness and the sadness of this ending swirl around in me, each sharpening the other. For the longest time, it felt kind of like my chest was cracking open, but not precisely in an unpleasant way.
— John Green, Paper Towns
Are you kidding? I'm supposed to put my books in this filthy tin coffin?
— Kami Garcia, Beautiful Chaos
I must endure, fighting the temptation simply to become slack-jawed like most of my school 'peers' (they wish!), who will themselves into a collective, vacant, trancelike state for the duration of each class. (Although I sometimes secretly envy their ability to empty their minds completely for a full fifty minutes, reanimating only at the sound of a bell, like Pavlov's dogs...)
— Beth Fantaskey, Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side
I am not your dear; I cannot lie down: send me to school soon, Mrs. Reed, for I hate to live here.
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Once, I ordered two thousand lady bugs from the local garden center and set them loose in the atrium. I sprinkled marigold seeds in the ficus planters and put gold fish in the lobby fountain. These are things I did with no consequences, no repercussions. My nineteen detentions were for smart answers and missed homework. There is no equivalent punishment for making the world a stranger place.
— Brenna Yovanoff
There's always a bit of suspense about the particular way in which a given school year will get off to a bad start.
— Frank Portman, King Dork
I wasn't aware that was how I felt, either, until it was out. And now that I've said it like that, I'm not exactly sure it is how I feel. But this isn't a piece of paper I can crumple up and throw away. they aren't words I can cross out to start over. Now they're out, and I know they'll hang here, between us, maybe forever.
— Terra Elan McVoy, Being Friends with Boys
Schoolboys are a merciless race, individually they are angels, but together, especially in schools, they are often merciless.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
That is what is marvelous about school, she realized: when you are in school, your talents are without number, and your promise is boundless. You ace a math test: you will one day work for NASA. The choir director asks you to sing a solo at the holiday concert: you are the next Mariah Carey. You score a goal, you win a poetry contest, you act in a play. And you are everything at once: actor, astronomer, gymnast, star. But at a certain point, you begin to feel your talents dropping away, like feathers from a molting bird. Cello lessons conflict with soccer practice. There aren't enough spots on the debating team. Calculus remains elusive. Until the day you realize that you cannot think of a single thing you are wonderful at.
— Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Ms. Hempel Chronicles
I should have liked to be asked to say what I knew. They always tried to ask what I did not know. When I would have willingly displayed my knowledge, they sought to expose my ignorance. This sort of treatment had only one result: I did not do well in examinations
— Winston S. Churchill
The societies kids naturally form are tribal. Gangs, clubs, packs. But we're herded into schools and terrified into behaving. Taught how we're supposed to pretend to be, taught to parrot all kinds of nonsense at the flick of a switch, taught to keep our heads down and our elbows in and shut off our minds and shut off our sex. We learn we can't even piss when we have to. That's how we learn to be plastic and dumb.
— Marge Piercy, Dance the Eagle to Sleep
There’s a huge difference for taking responsibility for one’s actions, and taking credit, and in this scenario I think we need to give credit where credit is due. I won’t take responsibility for my teacher’s drinking problem, but I will take credit for it.
— Benjamin Tomes, Confessions of the Unmedicated Mind; Growing up with ADHD, before ADHD, Volume 1: Home
Most of the students there, he said, don't know what they think. You tell 'em, they'll think it. I plan to tell 'em.
— John Knowles, Peace Breaks Out
The textbooks are dumbed down to the where your kid sister could probably read them, and the teacher go over and over and over the same stuff anyway, drilling it into your head so that they can ask you one hundred multiple-choice questions to get it all back out of you again.
— Charles Benoit, You
Knightley Academy stood out against the moonlight in silhouette, a ramshackle collection of chimneys, turrets and gables. Both boys stopped to take in the sight of the manicured lawns and tangled woods, the soaring chapel and the ivy-covered brick of the headmaster's house. They were home. For this, Henry felt, was home. Not some foreign castle encircled by guard towers, but this cozy, bizarre assortment of buildings with its gossiping kitchen maids and eccentric professors and clever students.
— Violet Haberdasher, The Secret Prince
The house-cat is a four-legged quadruped, the legs as usual being at the corners. It is what is sometimes called a tame animal, though it feeds on mice and birds of prey. Its colours are striped, it does not bark, but breathes through its nose instead of its mouth. Cats also mow, which you all have heard. Cats have nine liveses, but which is seldom wanted in this country, coz' of Christianity. Cats eat meat and most anythink speshuelly where you can't afford. That is all about 
— Helen Exley, Cat Quotations
School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, brutal violations of common sense and common decency. It doesn't take a reasonably bright boy long to discover that most of what is rammed into him is nonsense, and that no one really cares very much whether he learns it or not.
— H.L. Mencken
It wasn't school that I dreaded at all. School was not half bad. In many ways, this year had been downright fun. No, what I hated most about school was the fact that I had to come here all by myself. Simon and Peter went to their classes and did their own things, and I had to do my own thing. The thing I loved about summer was that I shared it with my brothers. Sure, my brothers and I often fought, but the best times in my life came when I was with them. School was a time when I had to go and do something without a brother at my side.
— Matthew Buckley, Chickens in the Headlights
Eighth grade's a distant rumor, a tabled issue, and Dylan knows from experience that the summer between might change anything, everything. He and Mingus Rude too and even Arthur Lomb for that matter are released from the paint-by-numbers page of their schooldays, from their preformatted roles as truant or victim, freed to an unspoiled summer, that inviting medium for doodling in self-transformation. 
— Jonathan Lethem, The Fortress of Solitude
Everyone who has ever been to school knows that school is prison, but almost nobody beyond school age says it is. It's not polite. We all tiptoe around the truth because admitting it would make us seem cruel and would point a finger at well-intentioned people doing what they believe to be essential. . . . A prison, according to the common, general definition, is any place of involuntary confinement and restriction of liberty. In school, as in adult prisons, the inmates are told exactly what they must do and are punished for failure to comply. Actually, students in school must spend more time doing exactly what they are told than is true of adults in penal institutions. Another difference, of course, is that we put adults in prison because they have committed a crime, while we put children in school because of their age.
— Peter Gray, Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life
Fifth grade was fourth grade with something wrong. Nothing changed outright. Instead it teetered. You'd pushed futility at Public School 38 so long by then you expected the building itself would be embarrassed and quit. The ones who couldn't read still couldn't, the teachers were teaching the same thing for the fifth time now and refusing to meet your eyes, some kids had been left back twice and were the size of janitors. The place was a cage for growing, nothing else. School lunch turned out to be the five-year-plan, the going concern. You couldn't be left back from fish sticks and sloppy joes. You'd retain at the least two thousand half-pint containers of vitamin D-enriched chocolate milk.Two black guys from the projects, twins, were actually named Ronald and Donald MacDonald. The twins themselves only shrugged, couldn't be made to agree it was incredible.
— Jonathan Lethem, The Fortress of Solitude
School should be the best party in town
— Peter Kline
School life is like being on a monkey mountain...monkeys in the same gang constantly fight and get back together again...and a hierarchy gets established.
— Shouko Akira, Monkey High!, Vol. 1
The roof was torn off the gym. God's way of telling the jocks that they'd better remember who's really charge.
— Dana Reinhardt, How to Build a House
It wasn't for children, seventh grade. You could read the stress of even entering the building in the postures of the teachers, the security guards. Nobody could relax in such a racial and hormonal disaster area.
— Jonathan Lethem, The Fortress of Solitude
thnkz 4 hlpng e wth e spllng d gwammer mestr josef
— ward schiller
Today that legend is inscribed on the stones that were used to build the walls of the school, and as the water falls out of the sky and over those stones, the words of the legend are carried down from the mountains and into the fields and gardens and orchards of Afghanistan. And as the water and the words rush past, who can fail to turn to his neighbor and whisper, with humility and awe-if this is what the weakest, the least valued, the most neglected among us are capable of achieving, truly is there anything we cannot do?
— Greg Mortenson, Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace With Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Great. I've been at this school for less than five hours and I've already made two enemies simply by existing. -Clara
— Cynthia Hand, Unearthly
I caught him by the collar and dumped him into the nearest bin."That's where people like YOU belong!" I spat at him as his legs wiggled in the air. "In the garbage!" - Chapter 2: Miserable Torture
— Aishabella Sheikh, Lavinia
I didn't give it much thought back then. I just wanted to get all the words straight and collect my A.
— Gayle Forman, Just One Day
You love tests?""Well, yeah. There are questions and answers. True or false, multiple choice, essay. What's not to love?
— Nora Roberts, Tribute
Can we please drop the whole ‘school starts tomorrow’ talk? I’d like to live in denial for a little while longer.
— Aileen Erin, Becoming Alpha
You can't have a goal without determination, because without the determination the goal will die.
— Patrick L. Turner
Stupid English.""English isn't stupid," I say."Well, my English teacher is." He makes a face. "Mr. Franklin assigned an essay about our favorite subject, and I wanted to write about lunch, but he won't let me.""Why not?""He says lunch isn't a subject."I glance at him. "It isn't.""Well," Jacob says, "it's not a predicate, either. Shouldn't he know that?
— Jodi Picoult
Some kids look at me strange in the hallways because I don't decorate my locker,...
— Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
A good roommate may be the single most important thing to have when one is away at school.
— Barbara Dana, A Voice of Her Own: Becoming Emily Dickinson