I’ll never retire as long as I live—that’s like retiring from life! I’ll never stop writing, teaching, lecturing. If you’re in good health, living is exciting on its own.

I feel no different than I felt at 99, 98 or 97. Just because you live a long time, you get all this attention. Just because you survived? Of course, I survived a lot.

I want to point the way to something that should forever lure them, when the TV set is broken and the movie is over and the school bell has rung for the last time.

I so enjoy being old because for the first time I don't have to do anything-work, teach, study. I feel very good about myself-and at my age I can say no to anything now if I don't want to do it. What a liberating word.

Education can't make us all leaders, but it can teach us which leader to follow.

Never mind the cream; it will always rise to the top. It's the skim milk that needs good teachers.

And that's it; that's why I want to teach; that's the one and only compensation: to make a permanent difference in the life of a child.