None of you has ever failed. School may have failed you. Goodbye to failure, children. Welcome to success.

Excellence is not an act but a habit. The things you do the most are the things you will do best.

People have to live by rules in the world. Why do we pretend in school that they don't?

You can't find me 20 children in Chicago, I don't care which section you go in - you can be on Michigan Avenue or here - and they won't be able to tell you that y is a vowel when it's the final syllable in a word, as in Nancy and icy. And no one bothers to teach the rules anymore - "i before e except after c."

The more monies we spend, the less children learn; because the more machines we have there, the more gadgets, the more gimmicks, the less children have to really think - the less they have to use their innate abilities, their curiosity, their brains.

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.

We've been brainwashed into thinking that it takes more monies than it actually does to educate children. That's been one of the brainwash jobs.