If we are to make the most of the opportunities ahead we need a bold break with the past.

The single most important thing in a child's performance is the quality of the teacher. Making sure a child spends the maximum amount of time with inspirational teachers is the most important thing.

It is literally the case that learning languages makes you smarter. The neural networks in the brain strengthen as a result of language learning.

Learning a foreign language, and the culture that goes with it, is one of the most useful things we can do to broaden the empathy and imaginative sympathy and cultural outlook of children.

For a few spotty years, I was that tragic geek

Proper history teaching is being crushed under the weight of play-based pedagogy which infantilises children, teachers and our culture.

I'm a decentralizer. I believe in trusting professionals.

It's often the case that successful people invite criticism.

I have come, reluctantly, to the conclusion that Boris [Johnson] cannot provide the leadership or build the team for the task ahead.

I have a different starting premise from those 100 academics who are so heavily invested in the regime of low expectations and narrow horizons which they have created.

I will take all the steps necessary to give the NHS at least another £100million per week by 2020.

Oh for a life of sensations rather than of thoughts.

In great affairs we ought to apply ourselves less to creating chances than to profiting from those that are offered.

We are all monsters.

I've had a face-lift. I've had my eyes done; liposuction; the nose job - well, that was a long time ago.

My strength has always been slow songs, so I never deviated from that, I always took care of my base and that's just doing slow songs and just pouring out my heart in songs.

I wanted to be an abstract painter, but I was rotten at it.

Fate,' I said, 'Is a theif.

I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

It's not just words. Action expresses priorities.

A translator is to be like his author; it is not his business to excel him.