Readers are leaders. Thinkers succeed.

That's how I try to think of education - a school is a miniature society where children learn to function in a real world.

Teaching children to read was one thing; keeping them interested in reading was something else.

Parents often brag about the amount of money spent per child, but I think, perhaps ironically, those great monies that are spent - I call it putting a band-aid on a hemorrhage.

One of the things that even wealthy children need is an education, and I think the problems I saw really have nothing to do with economics. So I was unhappy with what my own children were getting even in the better schools, and then I was seeing so many children here recruited for failure.

Once children learn how to learn, nothing is going to narrow their mind. The essence of teaching is to make learning contagious, to have one idea spark another.

If you can't make a mistake, you can't make anything.