"It is still possible for the largest education authority in the country to propose to erect inequality of educational opportunity into a principle of public policy by solemnly suggesting, with much parade of philosophical arguments, that the interests of the community require that the children of well-to-do parents, who pay fees, should be admitted to public secondary schools on easier intellectual terms than the children of poor parents who can enter them only with free places, and that the children who are so contemptible as to be unable to afford secondary education without assistance in the form of maintenance allowances shall not be admitted unless they reach a higher intellectual standard still!"

“Its desire is that what is weak in the higher education of the country should be strengthened, and that what is already excellent should be made accessible to all.”

“Too often, contemning the external order as unspiritual, has made it, and ultimately himself, less spiritual by reason of his contempt.”

“The foundation of democracy is the sense of spiritual independence which nerves the individual to stand alone against the powers of this world.”

“Convinced that character is all and circumstances nothing, sees in the poverty of those who fall by the way, not a misfortune to be pitied and relieved, but a moral failing to be condemned, and in riches, not an object of suspicion … but the blessing which rewards the triumph of energy and will.”

“Because men are men, social institutions - property rights and the organisation of industry, and the system of public health and education – should be planned...to emphasise and strengthen, not the class differences which divide but the common humanity which unites them.”

“In place... of "elementary" education for nine-tenths of the children and "secondary" education for the exceptionally fortunate or the exceptionally able, we need to envisage education as two stages in a single course which will embrace the whole development of childhood and adolescence up to sixteen, and obliterate the vulgar irrelevances of class inequality and economic pressure in a new educational synthesis.”