When the safety of America is threatened, we will spend any amount of money. The real safety of our nation is preparing this next generation so that they can take our place [in] thinking and technology and democracy.

Build an organization that can tackle the tough things and keep moving.

I graduated from Bowdoin College and went to the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Then I left and took a job teaching really poor inner-city white kids in Boston. It was interesting to me because I'd never been around poor whites before.

I want to be a children’s hero… Children need heroes because heroes give hope; without hope they have no future.

One of the things that sells music is when the artist is looked at as someone who's come up from the streets. Not just any streets, but the toughest, meanest streets of the urban ghetto. And that's called 'street credibility'.

Over the past five years, I've met several presidents, several secretaries of education ... and there is no plan. If you want to save your children, you're going to have to do it yourself. It's just us.

Education is the only billion dollar industry that tolerates abject failure.