Sadie

“As a society, we denounce "delinquents," "hoodlums" and "hooligans," but the truth is that we routinely fail troubled kids before they fail us. More children die each year in the United States from abuse and neglect than from cancer. For every child who dies, thousands are injured, raped or brutally abused. We shrug as millions of children undergo trauma in ways that harm them and unravel our social fabric--and then we blame the kids when things go wrong.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope

“History, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to be read. And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do. —JAMES BALDWIN”
― Jon Meacham, The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels

“One of the most infuriating elements of American myopia about investing in at-risk kids is that politicians often insist that they don't have the funds to pay for social services--but they somehow find the resources to pay for prisons later on.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope

“Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution have found that of people who follow three traditional rules—graduate from high school, get a full-time job and marry before having children—only 2 percent live in poverty. So play by these rules, called “the success sequence,” and by and large one can avoid poverty. In contrast, of those who do none of those three things, 79 percent live in poverty.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope