William Bennett Quotes

There is nothing more influential in a child's life than the moral power of quiet example. For children to take morality seriously they must see adults take morality seriously.

There are no menial jobs, only menial attitudes.

Government, obviously, cannot fill a child's emotional needs. Nor can it fill his spiritual and moral needs. Government is not a father or mother. Government has never raised a child, and it never will.

Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that thankfulness is indeed a virtue.

"Honor never grows old, and honor rejoices the heart of age. It does so because honor is, finally, about defending those noble and worthy things that deserve defending, even if it comes at a high cost. In our time, that may mean social disapproval, public scorn, hardship, persecution, or as always, even death itself. The question remains: What is worth defending? What is worth dying for? What is worth living for?

If we want our children to possess the traits of character we most admire, we need to teach them what those traits are and why they deserve both admiration and allegiance. Children must learn to identify the forms and content of those traits.

We are here to help one another along life's journey.

If there is one thing educators can agree on, it's this: children do better in school when their parents get involved in their learning.

I do not suggest that you should not have an open mind ... but don't keep your mind so open that your brains fall out.

I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could - if that were your sole purpose - you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.

Responsible persons are mature people who have taken charge of themselves and their conduct, who own their actions and own up to them--who answer for them.

It is our character that supports the promise of our future - far more than particular government programs or policies.

Real fatherhood means love and commitment and sacrifice and a willingness to share responsibility and not walking away from one's children.

The President is the symbol of who the people of the United States are. He is the person who stands for us in the eyes of the world and the eyes of our children.

People of good character are not all going to come down on the same side of difficult political and social issues. Good people - people of character and moral literacy - can be conservative, and good people can be liberal. We must not permit our disputes over thorny political questions to obscure the obligation we have to offer instruction to all our young people in the area in which we have, as a society, reached a consensus: namely, on the importance of good character, and some of its pervasive particulars.

All real education is the architecture of the soul.

Much of the left-liberal elite despise traditional religious beliefs ... in general, they are profoundly uncomfortable with religious institutions and the traditional values they embody.

When we were attacked on Sept. 11, we knew the main reason for the attack was that Islamists hated our way of life, our virtues, our freedoms. What we never imagined was that the free press - an institution at the heart of those virtues and freedoms - would be among the first to surrender.

Loving your homeland is just as natural as loving your father or mother - after all, your country nourishes you, protects you, and in many ways makes you who you are. Just as it's a virtue to honor your parents, it's a good and admirable thing to honor the land you call home.

Home is a shelter from storms - all sorts of storms.

Our schools should get five years to get back to where they were in 1963. If they're still bad maybe we should declare educational bankruptcy, give the people their money and let them educate themselves and start their own schools

I have no doubt that the real irritation of those on the religious right is not that their particular creed is not embraced by the schools, but that often their creed is the only one singled out for contempt.

If we are surrounded by the trivial and the vicious, it is all too easy to make our peace with it.

Our common language is English. And our common task is to ensure that our non-English-speaking children learn this common language.

I think we need to find out why the citizens of the world's wealthiest, most envied, most powerful country are so cynical, so distressed, so angry, so ticked of about so many things.