There will be statues of Bill Gates across the Third World. There's a reasonable shot that - because of his money - we will cure malaria.

Without the New York Times, there is no blog community. They'd have nothing to blog about.

If you think advantage lies in resources, then you think the best educational system is the one that spends the most money.

The iPod is clearly a tipping point (and I'm not quite sure it is a wholly positive development), because it is a revolution in the way that we consume creative property, which I would call art. It has radically changed the relationship between the artist and the audience, how money changes hands, and how much money changes hands. Music was the first, and books are coming next. The Kindle or some form of electronic book is clearly inevitable, and it will massively reshape how books are sold, who pays for them, and how they're consumed. It is going to be really fascinating.

Acquaintances represent a source of social power, and the more acquaintances you have the more powerful you are.

It's not about how smart you are. It's about your values.

When the students were asked to identify their race on a pretest questionnaire, that simple act was sufficient to prime them with all the negative stereotypes associated with African Americans and academic achievement. If a white student from a prestigious private high school gets a higher SAT score than a black student from an inner-city school, is it because she’s truly a better student, or is it because to be white and to attend a prestigious high school is to be constantly primed with the idea of “smart”?