“The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops – no, but the kind of man the country turns out.” — Ralph Waldo  Emerson, 19th-century American essayist, public philosopher and poet

“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically... Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.”

— Martin Luther King Jr., Nobel Prize-winning 20th-century American civil rights leader

"The proper time to influence the character of a child is about a hundred years before he’s born."

— William R. Inge

"If we want our children to possess the traits of character we most admire, we need to teach them what those traits are and why they deserve both admiration and allegiance. Children must learn to identify the forms and content of those traits."

— William J. Bennett, former U.S. Secretary of Education, author