You may not do well, necessarily, up front, and in order to be the best, you've got to work hard.

We've lost our competitive spirit. We've become so obsessed with making kids feel good about themselves that we've lost sight of building the skills they need to actually be good at things.

That should be the goal, is that every kid in every neighborhood, despite whatever challenges they may face, are getting a great education in our public schools.

I think that one thing that people are missing is that we are never going to be able to fix this country's [American] economy in the long run until we fix our public education system.

Creativity is good and whatever. But if the children don't know how to read, I don't care how creative you are. You're not doing your job.

We are always going to put the best interests of kids above the rights, privileges and priorities of adults.

If you grew up in a lower-income community, or less well-off, the belief is that the way to change that circumstance is through education.

An education reformer is as important in America as the first lady.

We all have to have more rigorous expectations of our kids in America.

I'd rather deal with anger than apathy.

Poverty is so significant that we can't expect to overcome the impacts of poverty in schools.

I recalled something I’d read a long time ago about Satan. When he appeared, it wouldn’t be as a demon but as an ordinary-looking guy with a convincing message of peace.

Gestures, in love, are incomparably more attractive, effective and valuable than words.

I'm playing dark history. It's beyond black. I'm dealing with the dark things of the cosmos.

Let us be well persuaded that everyone of us possesses happiness in proportion to his virtue and wisdom, and according as he acts in obedience to their suggestion.

I wonder if one of the penalties of growing older is that you become more and more conscious that nothing is very permanent.

Night wasn't so much falling as sharpening its claws.

People like [Memoirs of a Woman Doctor], whether young people, young women, even critics - male critics - they were not shocked by it. Of course, some parts were cut.

Twitter is about the democratization of access to a platform that allows anyone in the world - who has a mobile phone and access to SMS - to have a voice and be heard.

The way things are going, we are not too far from the day when it will take an hour's labor just to pay for the gasoline to get to the job.

In this world of change naught which comes stays and naught which goes is lost.