James (JD) Dittes

“What you make from a tree should be at least as miraculous as what you cut down.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

“But the workingpeople, the common people, they won't allow it.' 'It's the common people who get most fun out of the torture and execution of great men.... If it's not going too far back I'd like to know who it was demanded the execution of our friend Jesus H. Christ.”
― John Dos Passos, The Big Money

“The traveling world is parallel to the world of those rooted to one spot; it is the other end of the telescope, so to speak. Things that are taken by most people to have solidity and permanence become relative and subject to time. The church spire, the town hall or courthouse that watches over your days and is an ever-fixed mark to the merchant or the laborer, is to the traveling man only one among many such. The cherished touchstones of your daily life are to him a set of fresh opportunities for passing adventure, a source of profit to be extracted quickly, like gold from a small mountain, before moving on to the next El Dorado.”
― Tom Piazza

“Students quickly receive the message that they can only be smart when they are not who they are. This, in many ways, is classroom colonialism; and it can only be addressed through a very different approach to teaching and learning.”
― Christopher Emdin, For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education