Most of our competitor nations around the world have a national education system and America is the only major nation in the world that operates off of local school boards. They receive very little direction from state boards of education or from the nation. So local school boards direct basically what happens and too often they're not willing to track or to do the supervision of the education system that will make it world competitive.
John GlennIf there is one thing Iโve learned in my years on this planet, itโs that the happiest and most fulfilled people Iโve known are those who devoted themselves to something bigger and more profound than merely their own self interest.
John GlennAmerica put more money into research, into the new and the unknown than any nation in history, and the same thing with education, and those two things led us into a worldwide preeminence in a very short period of time.
John GlennWe had a lot of confidence that there was going to be a successful mission. We weren't off on some suicide effort, certainly [with Friendship 7].
John GlennI hate to think that we may be out there seven to ten years out and dependent on the Russians for our journey into space.
John GlennThere had been a number of failures but we weren't going out to ride a failure. And we felt they'd corrected all the difficulties with the boosters before that time and the launch problems. And so we had a lot of confidence that there was going to be a successful mission. We weren't off on some suicide effort, certainly.
John Glenn