The Week in Quotes (Nov. 25 – Dec. 1)

Here are some of the week’s most notable quotes.

Kathy Miller, president of Texas Freedom Network, on the State Board of Education’s recent social studies vote.

“This was just an extended exercise in politicians masquerading as historians. If the facts didn’t conform to their personal beliefs about the past, board members just ignored what teachers and historians were telling them. If this were a classroom, they would get a failing grade and certainly have failed millions of Texas kids across the state.”

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Michael Sorrell, president of Paul Quinn College, a historically black college in South Dallas, in Texas Monthly’s “The Power Issue.” Sorrell was the keynote speaker at TFN’s annual luncheon last month.

“I see myself as a hope merchant. My job is to give them the strength and courage to aim higher and achieve. My job is to get them to dream, and to dream audaciously.”

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The Corpus Christi Caller-Times editorial board in a recent editorial on the politicization of social studies standards by the State Board of Education.

“Our opinion is that the Texas Freedom Network had it right. But that isn’t really an opinion. It’s a recognition of the facts.”

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American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer explaining that dinosaurs extinction was caused by a lack of vegetation after the biblical flood.

“I have no hesitation in saying this because I do not doubt the word of God, that man coexisted with dinosaurs. Now, people will tell me I’m a neanderthal, I’m a Cro-Magnon, this is superstition, this is an old wive’s tale; I don’t care because my trust and confidence is in the word of God. So that word of God indicates that we walked the earth with dinosaurs.”

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Britton Franklin “Frank” Earnest, “chief of heritage defense” for the Virginia Sons of Confederate Veterans, making a bizarre (and deeply offensive) argument about civil rights.

“Sometimes in the zeal to give equal rights, the pendulum swings too far. That’s where my father was at. This is a horrible example, but it’s like slavery. . . . I understand if you were a slave, you wanted freedom now. But there were people questioning, ‘How do you just turn them loose?’ You had to prepare them. And I think that really goes to desegregation. My father thought it needed to be incremental, done in a reasonable manner. ‘Let’s not rush into it.’”