Civility is a work of the imagination, for it is through the imagination that we render others sufficiently like ourselves for them to become subjects of tolerance and respect, if not always affection.

I don't divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and failures...I divide the world into the learners and non-learners.

Jefferson thought schools would produce free men: we prove him right by putting dropouts in jail.

The question to ask is not whether you are a success or a failure, but whether you are a learner or a nonlearner.

I divide the world into learners and non-learners.

9/11 was a signal that we were living in a new world - a world of interdependence, a world in which people could attack the United States not from the outside, but from the inside. It was a sign that the United States, the most powerful country in the world, could watch the cathedral of capitalism at the Trade Center and the heart of its defense at the Pentagon be struck internally, not really across borders, so that borders don't matter anymore.

Civility is a work of the imagination, for it is through the imagination that we render others sufficiently like ourselves for them to become subjects of tolerance and respect, if not always affection.