If you enjoy reading, writing, learning, and sharing what you have learned, don't hesitate to look for a life where you can continue to do those things. It could be as a scientist, an educator, an editor, a journalist, the founder of an organization. You only live once, and it is a tragedy if you deny yourself these options without trying to pursue them.

I’d rather see the United States as a beacon of Good Work and Good Citizenship, rather than as #1 on some international educational measurement.

You learn at your best when you have something you care about and can get pleasure in being engaged in.

Emile Zola was a poor student at his school at Aix. We are all so different largely because we all have different combinations of intelligences. If we recognize this, I think we will have at least a better chance of dealing appropriately with many problems that we face in the world.

What we want... is for students to get more interested in things, more involved in them, more engaged in wanting to know; to have projects that they can get excited about and work on over long periods of time, to be stimulated to find things out on their own.

Teaching which ignores the realities of children will be rejected as surely as any graft which attempts to ignore the body's immune system.

Kids go to school and college and get through, but they don't seem to really care about using their minds. School doesn't have the kind of long term positive impact that it should.