Sports and entertainment are the only places where inner-city kids see themselves being able to succeed. Their intellectual development is something they don't relate to.

I think that when we have a better educated society when there is less violence in our cities when people get back into the workforce and have the opportunity to take care of themselves and their families - that for me really is the kind of success and the kind of America that I think most of us still want we aspire to.

I believe that writers unless they consider themselves terribly exquisite are at heart people who live by night a little bit outside society moving between delinquency and conformity.

Watching people just look out for themselves I think is extremely interesting. It goes right back to something like 'The Beggar's Opera' - the underbelly of society how it operates and how that reflects their so-called betters.

In this I-me society my job is to get people to buy into something bigger than themselves.

I suppose that is my central obsession. What we owe to society what we owe to ourselves.

The first task in teaching is to bring to consciousness what the students already believe by virtue of their personal experiences about themselves and society.

We should like to have some towering geniuses to reveal us to ourselves in colour and fire but of course they would have to fit into the pattern of our society and be able to take orders from sound administrative types.

If you want a free society teach your children what oppression tastes like. Tell them how many miracles it takes to get from here to there. Above all encourage them to ask questions. Teach them to think for themselves.

The 1960s were about releasing ourselves from conventional society and freeing ourselves.