William J. Bennett Quotes

22 Sourced Quotes

Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that thankfulness is indeed a virtue.

William J. Bennett
True courage is mixed with circumspection, the kind of healthy skepticism that asks, 'Is this the best way to do this?' True cowardice is marked by chronic skepticism, which always says, 'It can't be done.'

William J. Bennett
Have we come to the point where it is now considered a secular blasphemy to acknowledge the name of God at all?

William J. Bennett
A weakened sense of responsibility does not weaken the fact of responsibility.

William J. Bennett
Too much of anything, even a good thing, may prove to be our undoing...[We] need...to set definite boundaries on our appetites.

William J. Bennett
I have no doubt that the real irritation of those on the religious right is not that their particular creed is not embraced by the schools, but that often their creed is the only one singled out for contempt.

William J. Bennett
Much of the left-liberal elite despise traditional religious beliefs... in general, they are profoundly uncomfortable with religious institutions and the traditional values they embody.

William J. Bennett
Loving your homeland is just as natural as loving your father or mother - after all, your country nourishes you, protects you, and in many ways makes you who you are. Just as it's a virtue to honor your parents, it's a good and admirable thing to honor the land you call home.

William J. Bennett
The new source of divisiveness is the assault of secularism on religion.

William J. Bennett
President Bush was widely ridiculed for consulting the Reverend Billy Graham before the Gulf war.

William J. Bennett
The history of our nation is intertwined with a certain religious tradition, and that the First Amendment was not intended to result in the complete exclusion of religious beliefs from our public classrooms.

William J. Bennett
In the battle for preserving sound social and moral norms, many religious institutions can no longer be counted as allies.

William J. Bennett
The elementary school must assume as its sublime and most solemn responsibility the task of teaching every child in it to read. Any school that does not accomplish this has failed.

William J. Bennett
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
Responsible persons are mature people who have taken charge of themselves and their conduct, who own their actions and own up to them—who answer for them.

William J. Bennett
Most certification today is pure 'credentialism'. Certification must begin to reflect our demand for excellence, not our appreciation of parchment.

William J. Bennett
Let's take some students of the same social class and I.Q. and compare those who go to college and those who don't four years down the road. Let's see how they stack up on things like values and reasoning ability.

William J. Bennett
There is nothing more influential in a child's life than the moral power of quiet example. For children to take morality seriously they must see adults take morality seriously.

William J. Bennett
The formation of character in young people is educationally a different task from and a prior task to, the discussion of the great, difficult ethical controversies of the day.

William J. Bennett
Nothing in recent years, on television or anywhere else, has improved on a good story that begins "Once upon a time..."

William J. Bennett
Most colleges promise to make you better culturally and morally, but it is not evident that they do. They are not delivering on their promises.

William J. Bennett
If my own son, who is now 10 months, came to me and said, 'You promised to pay for my tuition at Harvard; how about giving me $50,000 instead to start a little business?' I might think that was a good idea.

William J. Bennett