Scott (to Harvey): Did you bury me?
Harvey: Why would I do that, Scott?
Scott: You buried me.
Harvey: Scott, I don't get many chances to get you the hell out of Winslow High. I didn't waste the opportunity.

Scott: (to Kevin Jackson) What does it say about how you think of yourself if you were to conclude the only reason I want you on the team is because of the color of your skin? Is that how you view yourself, Mr. Jackson? Are you going to assume the role of black victim every opportunity that comes your way? Every gain, every loss, will simply be the by-product of your ethnicity? Why don't you hustle off to your favorite tattoo parlor and have "woe" stamped onto your forehead. Let me tell you, Mr. Jackson, I have no use for victims on my team, no matter what they come in. You have a talent. It's that talent I'm trying to avail myself of. Forgive me for trying to recognize it in the face of your dogged determination not to.

Scott: Mr. Senate, I need a favor.
Harry: Is it sexual?
Scott: Why must you be depraved at every turn, Mr. Senate?
Harry: It's in my character.

Scott: Teaching is my calling, Steven, but it's never been my dream. Dreams are made of sterner stuff.
Steven: That's ambition.
Scott: Up there, that's a dream. And this experience, I think, will only make conspicuous how... how my life is utterly without song, I guess.

Scott: What did you call me?
Darren: I called you a lot of things, but I finished up with "autocratic hack."

Sheryl: Mr. Guber, if you keep asking those rhetorical questions, one day, somebody will respond, and the answer won't please you.

Steven Harper: We do not help kids one by one here. Too many of them, too few of us. We serve masses, hoping more of them make it than don't. And our best results, like it or not, come with policy.

Steven Harper: Why are you here?
Harvey Lipschultz: Because vice-president "Hitler" has ordered me to stay here.

Steven: Did you talk to Tina?
Scott: No, I thought I should perhaps bring you in on it since they think of me as a conservative fascist prude.

Steven: I can't do it. I got a mother wantin' me to fumigate buses. I got one teacher keepin' secrets that should get him fired, and another teacher who's an old senile bigot who definitely should be fired. I got a student teaching a course for which I'm going to get my ass dragged in front of the school committee, and another teacher appearing naked on a student web site. And I hear you're walkin' around suspending everybody in your path. Is that true?
Scott: It is. It's been a good day.

Steven: I understand you've had a tragedy with one of your partners and these aren't the happiest of times, but if you think you can intimidate me, not gonna happen.
Ellenor: You project nicely. You don't need to be in my face, but while you're here, look into my eyes. Do I look scared? And by the way, you're not better looking up close.
Susan: All right, enough with the chest thumping.

Steven: I'm not taking her side.
Tina: Then what are you doing?
Steven: I'm covering my gigantic ass.

Steven: It doesn't offend you when he says it's his job to get your black ass into college?
Student: Not really.
Steven: Why not?
Student: Because he will. That man will get my black ass into college.

Steven: Last day of school before vacation. What's the word for it?
Scott: Halleluia.

Student: Jefferson used to sleep with his slaves. The book don't say nothin' about that. They don't even say how he even had slaves. Washington neither. So I don't see why I should bust my black ass reading about a bunch of lies.
Harvey Lipschultz: Well, you see Mr. Jackson, my job is to see that you get your black ass into college. And whether these things in these books be lies or not, your achievement tests that you will be taking are standardized. And you'll have to know all these untruths in order for you to pass them, and how many slaves Jefferson had sex with will not be on the test. And if you fail American History, Mr. Jackson, you'll be sitting here again next year. And you'll have to listen all over again to what my shriveled, white, Jewish ass has to say.