Geoffrey Canada

“Poverty places not just one or two obstacles but multiple obstacles in a child's pathway to what we would consider to be regular development - cognitively, intellectually and emotionally.”

“Education is the only billion dollar industry that tolerates abject failure.”

“Lots of boys pick strong messages about who they are and who they want to be from the media.”

“People don't believe or understand that a community can lose hope. You can have a whole community where hopelessness is the norm, where folks don't have faith that things will get better because history and circumstances have proven over 30, 40, or 50 years that things don't get better.”

“Middle-class families know education begins at birth.”

“An extended school day gives administrators the ability to ensure children get a well-rounded education.”

“The rates of soda consumption in our poorest communities cannot be explained by individual consumer preferences alone, but rather are linked to broader issues of access and affordability of healthy foods in low-income neighborhoods, and to the marketing efforts of soda companies themselves.”

“My own faith was nurtured by my grandmother and her clinging deeply to her faith when she was dying a painful and slow death from cancer.”

“Young people will tell you, if you're not prepared to write the most violent, the most misogynistic, the most horrible kinds of rhymes and scenarios, you are not going to get air play.”

“You don't need someone destroying you when your own people are the worst messengers possible. And this is what black people in America have not come to grips with.”

“People talk about Wall Street greed, but one of the things many people don't understand is that there are a lot of organizations that have been the recipient of largess from the same Wall Street.”

“Video games offer violent messages, and even the sports video games include taunting and teasing.”

“One of the things that sells music is when the artist is looked at as someone who's come up from the streets. Not just any streets, but the toughest, meanest streets of the urban ghetto. And that's called 'street credibility.'”

“How is it we could have a system where schools could remain lousy for 50 years and yet you do exactly the same thing this year that they did 50 years ago when it didn't work then, and no one feels any pressure to change?”

“When I was growing up, kids used to talk about snitching... It never extended as a cultural norm outside of the gangsters.”

“Convincing people to give your way a try will work if you neutralize - and sometimes you have to cauterize - the ones who really are against change. They're the kind of person who, if you tell them it's raining outside, they'll fight you tooth and nail.”

“There's not a day that goes by that I don't draw on my undergraduate background in psychology.”

“When I began working in not-for-profits, it was taking a vow of poverty, which eliminated huge numbers of folks.”

“I want my kids to graduate from high school. But that's not enough. I also want them to go to college. Why? Because rich people's kids go to college. And if that's good enough for them, it's good enough for my kids. Because you know what? College graduates don't tend to go to jail as frequently as nongraduates.”