Inner City Quotes

• In inner-city, low-income communities of color, there's such a high correlation in terms of educational quality and success.

  Bill Gates

  Educational, Color, Cities

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• Until we're educating every kid in a fantastic way, until every inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do.

  Bill Gates

  Inspiring, Success, Education

  Playboy Interview, 1994.

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• 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.

  Barack Obama

  Children, School, Cities

  Barack Obama (2007). “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance”, p.258, Broadway Books

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• When I see brokenness, poverty and crime in inner cities, I also see the enormous potential and readiness for transformation and rebirth. We are creating an art form that comes from the heart and reflects the pain and sorrow of people's lives. It also expresses joy, beauty, and love. This process lays the foundation of building a genuine community in which people are reconnected with their families, sustained by meaningful work, nurtured by the care of each other and will together raise and educate their children. Then we witness social change in action.

  Lily Yeh

  Family, Meaningful, Art

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• There is something deeply hypocritical in a society that holds an inner-city child only eight years old "accountable" for her performance on a high-stakes standardized exam but does not hold the high officials of our government accountable for robbing her of what they gave their own kids six or seven years before.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Children, Kids, Eight

  Jonathan Kozol (2005). “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America”, p.53, Broadway Books

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• As much as politicians, any politicians, Democrat or Republican, are saying they're trying to help the schools, it's hard because our country is in debt. I would like to do something for the inner-city schools because that's our future, and education is very important in helping our country continue to progress and not regress.

  Ansel Elgort

  Country, School, Cities

  Source: www.cosmopolitan.com

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• I'd like to see Apple and Dell factories be brought to the inner cities; in every project in America, there's some factory there, and it's abandoned, and I'd like to see those factories open and bring jobs to America.

  will.i.am

  Jobs, Cities, Apples

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• So, if I'm no cheerleader of sports, why write a chapter about it? Sports do have some positive impact on society. They solve problems, such as how to get inner-city kids to spend $175 on shoes. They serve as a backdrop for some of our most memorable commercials. And they remain the one and only relevant application of math. Not only that, but we have sports to thank for most of the last century's advances in manliness. The system starts in school, where gym class separates the men from the boys. Then those men are taught to be winners, or at least, losers that hate themselves.

  Stephen Colbert

  Sports, Hate, Kids

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• Let's concede that we have decided to let our children grow up in two separate nations, and lead two separate kinds of lives. If, on the other hand, we have the courage to rise to this challenge to name what's happening within our inner-city schools, then we also need the courage to be activist and go out and fight like hell to change it.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Growing Up, Children, School

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• Childhood depression tends to be more common in inner cities, being most frequently related to serious social deprivation, bullying, domestic violence, wartime experience and famine. It is, for example, a serious problem among children who are traumatised refugees.

  Robert Winston

  Bullying, Children, Cities

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• We've directed the creation of a task force for reducing violent crime in America, including the horrendous situation - take a look at Chicago and others - taking place right now in our inner cities.

  Donald Trump

  Cities, America, Chicago

  Source: www.esquire.com

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• I am involved with 'Write Girl,' which is such a great organization, because they go into inner city schools and work with underprivileged girls to pair them up with other writers. And it gets them learning to express themselves and become familiar with their own voice. They have a 100% success ratio getting those girls into college.

  Melissa Rosenberg

  Girl, Writing, School

  "A Conversation with Melissa Rosenberg – Writer of the Twilight Series". Interview with Melissa Silverstein, www.indiewire.com. November 20, 2012.

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• When I moved into one of the worst inner-cities in America to do missionary work I had to do risk assessment, and It was a risk. My family could have been in danger, house could get robbed at any minute but I count it all as nothing compared to knowing Jesus it was all worth it at the end of the day.

  LeCrae

  Jesus, Assessment, Cities

  Source: thegospelguru.com

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• A person like myself, born and raised in the inner city of Atlanta, Georgia, to lower-middle-class parents. But I had the opportunity to get an education, to go and earn a commission in the United States Army, to serve for 22 years, to lead men and women in combat.

  Allen West

  Education, Army, Men

  "Fiery Speech Thrusts Congressional Candidate Into National Spotlight". "Hannity" with Sean Hannity, www.foxnews.com. December 15, 2009.

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• I am a black male who grew up in the inner city of Atlanta and no one ever followed me in a mall. I don't recall any doors clicking when I crossed the street. And I never had anyone clutching their handbag when I got on an elevator. I guess having two awesome parents who taught me to be a respectful young man paid dividends.

  Allen West

  Men, Atlanta, Doors

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• If all I ever wrote about was inner city freaks, I think it would be dishonest.

  Eric Bogosian

  Thinking, Cities, Would Be

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• I taught for 17 years in an inner city comprehensive schools.

  Estelle Morris, Baroness Morris of Yardley

  School, Artist, Years

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• Inner city education must change. Our responsibility is not merely to provide access to knowledge; we must produce educated people.

  James L. Farmer, Jr.

  Education, Responsibility, School

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• This is the problem with over-crowded inner-city schools there aren't enough parts for everyone in the nativity story.

  Karl Pilkington

  School, Cities, Stories

  Karl Pilkington (2010). “An Idiot Abroad: The Travel Diaries of Karl Pilkington”, p.97, Canongate Books

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• Dresden? There is not such a place any longer." "I want to point out, that besides Essen, we never actually considered any particular industrial sites as targets. The destruction of industrial sites always was some sort of bonus for us. Our real targets always were the inner cities.

  Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet

  Real, War, Cities

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• Many offenders are tracked for prison at early ages, labeled as criminals in their teen years, and then shuttled from their decrepit, underfunded inner city schools to brand-new, high-tech prisons.

  Michelle Alexander

  School, Years, Cities

  Michelle Alexander (2013). “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”, p.150, The New Press

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• Hypersegregated inner-city schools - in which one finds no more than five or ten white children, at the very most, within a student population of as many as 3,000 - are the norm, not the exception, in most northern urban areas today.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Children, School, Cities

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• My parents didn't really understand too much about sport. At that time, we were in a Polish community in the inner city of Chicago, and I was the youngest of a bunch of cousins. Polish families are real big, with cousins and aunts and uncles.

  Mike Krzyzewski

  Sports, Cousin, Uncles

  American Academy of Achievement interview, www.achievement.org. May 22, 1997.

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• Now that Obama's president, it changes inner-city youths. They can now not just dream to be Lil Waynes and 50 Cents, but they can now dream to be Obamas.

  will.i.am

  Dream, Cities, President

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I grew up in the inner city of Chicago, and then I moved to Robbins, and it kind of raised me. When I was in college, I actually had them change the starting lineup to say 'from Robbins, Illinois' instead of 'Chicago, Illinois.'

  Dwyane Wade

  College, Illinois, Cities

  "Dwyane Wade: Basketball Dad". Interview with Moira Lawler, www.menshealth.com. March 15, 2013.

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