Edward Zigler quotes:

I don't think anything good is happening. I think we're paying the price for it. I think while crime in general is going down, youth crime is going up. I think mental health problems of the youth are going up. You can't show causality. It's a hard stretch.

It's also the environment that determines a considerable part of the growth and development of children.

Get kids out of poverty. Poverty is devastating.

I teach child development and social policy as an undergraduate course, and I tell my students, "Look, on any of these issues, if you don't want to work on it for thirty years, don't start."

I don't think child care is ever going to be much of a federal effort. Just like education. Six or 7 percent - that's all I want from the government. Pay that piece of it for poor or developmentally disabled children.

We have to stop harming children in child care. I'm trying to make us stop. I wouldn't know what to do otherwise.

The problem in child care, which really all of us are going to have to think hard on, is that there is no really great solution that we can come up with for ages zero to three.

Most mothers and fathers will shop more for a TV set than they will for a child care center for their child.

You win what you can win when you can win it, and keep pushing - all the time. And that's how this game is played. And I'll play it till I can't play it anymore.

I'm really not a partisan political person. I remember when I was in Washington they kept trying to get me to say whether I was a Republican or a Democrat. I just said, my politics are children. That's all I know anything about.

Kids do better, frankly [when the economy is strong]. Jobs make great years for kids.

The best indicator of quality day care is the kid wants to go there, and doesn't want to go home.

I don't think if you take somebody's temperature a lot that will make them well.

So there's much more to life than one's intelligence score. To be a decent human being. To have some character.

I study children, and they're my subjects in my studies. They're my colleagues, really, all these little kids. And I owe them.

I know all the problems of the schools. They're rigid, they're bureaucratic, they've got a lot of problems. But it's such an important institution, and holds such promise.

I thought the whole idea of being a conservative was to keep the government from messing around in people's lives. And yet they say the government should be getting into people's families. That's messing pretty heavily where I come from.

I guess if you're doing God's work, whatever you do is in His name.

A kid's emotions and personality are just as important as I.Q.

All of us know high-I.Q. people with whom we don't want to be in the same room.