This is a day we have managed to avoid for a quarter of a century. We've talked about it before and speculated about it, and it finally has occurred. We hoped we could push this day back forever.

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.

To sit back and let fate play its hand out and never influence it is not the way man was meant to operate.

We (the DOE) are poisoning our people in the name of national security.

It was the time of the Cold War and so there were was a lot of pressure on the - to get going and the Russians were claiming that they were - Soviets were claiming they were ahead of us in technology. And so it was against that backdrop that the early space flights took off.

Too many people, when they get old, think that they have to live by the calendar.

America had an emphasis on the individual and so education became available for everyone.