Phillip Hoose > Quotes

“We were supposed to be an English literature class, but Miss Nesbitt used literature to teach real life. She said she didn't have time to teach us like a regular English teacher--we were too far behind. Instead, she taught us the world through literature.”
― Phillip Hoose, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice

“I knew then and I know now that, when it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it. You can't sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, "This is not right.

—Claudette Colvin”
― Phillip Hoose, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice

“(A)rt is like bread, an essential ingredient for nourishing the soul.”
― Phillip M. Hoose, The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club

“Each species with which we share the earth is a success story. Each of our cohabitants has evolved an ingenious set of life strategies, and made them work. To live on an earth without fascinating, often beautiful creatures would be to live on a lesser earth. The trick is not to let them slip away, but to understand and help them on their terms.”
― Phillip M. Hoose, Moonbird: A Year on the Wind with the Great Survivor B95

“Knud got an artist’s sketchbook. He intended on drawing set designs for theater plays, until he noticed a warning printed on the front page. KNUD PEDERSEN: A message in bold letters read, “You are not allowed to make drawings of naked women.” I filled the entire sketchbook with naked girls and when I got my porridge the next morning I used it as glue and plastered all the walls in my cells with the drawings. This was my first art exhibition. There went all my hobby materials for the next two months. I was a terrible prisoner.”
― Phillip M. Hoose, The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club

“America's attention had turned to race relations during that winter of 1954-55, largely driven by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the nation's public schools would eventually have to be racially integrated. Crispus Attucks students were studying black history without being fully aware that their basketball team was making it.”
― Phillip Hoose, Unbeatable: How Crispus Attucks Basketball Broke Racial Barriers and Jolted the World

“They were forced to strip naked, bend over, and receive rectal examinations.”
― Phillip Hoose, The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club

“[on the bus] by her other companions she”
― Phillip Hoose, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice

“Norway surrendered after two months of fighting, which had left 1,335 Norwegians killed or wounded.”
― Phillip Hoose, The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club

“but dozens of reporters and photographers staked out positions in front”
― Phillip M. Hoose, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice

“It was easy to see that it was all crap.”
― Phillip M. Hoose, The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club

“To many white fans, the Attucks players were like the Harlem Globetrotters, entertainers who had come to play an exhibition. But the games meant something quite different to Principal Lane. He viewed each backwoods gym as a showcase for progress and each Attucks player a goodwill ambassador. A game at a rural schoolhouse was a chance to demonstrate to white fans, some of whom doubtless still had robes and hoods stashed in their closets, that black and white Hoosiers could compete without violence or incident. If Hoosiers could observe racial harmony while their sons competed in a packed gym, Lane thought, they would later come to believe in its possibility in schools and neighborhoods.”
― Phillip Hoose, Unbeatable: How Crispus Attucks Basketball Broke Racial Barriers and Jolted the World