- It'd do your kids good to learn how to handle liquor... instead of algebra.
- You're talking like a fool.
- Oh, be I. I sat in this classroom four years. I sat right here. Everything important was learned somewheres else.
- You never applied yourself.
- If you had, you might've learned something in school.
- Tell my wife, a cleaning woman. Tell me, a janitor, cleaning toilets.
- Stop it!
- Tell every mill worker behind on his bills.
- I said, stop it. If you had applied yourself, you might have learned how to live intelligently.
- There ain't nobody in this here town living intelligently. Nobody.
- I don't believe that.
- All right. Name me one important person graduated from this here school. Name one. You can't. I'm gonna tell you something, Ms. Thornton... something you can teach your class someday. The minute they walk out that door, they walk into a dog-eat-dog world. It's crawl in front of the big dogs if you want to eat, get a job. I won't do it. I won't do it! That's why I'm washing windows, scrubbing walls, emptying ashes. I never had nothing I ever wanted. Shakespeare did me no more good... than Washington did crossing the Delaware.
Peyton Place
