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.

I believe the more difficult a child is, the more I want that child. But I won't take a child until the parent brings him to us. So it is just the opposite - we get the ones that no one else will take. We get sawdust, and we have to make boards out of it.

I have discovered few learning disabled students in my three decades of teaching. I have, however, discovered many, many victims of teaching inabilities.

Excellence is not an act, but a habit.

Kids don't fail. Teachers fail, school systems fail. The people who teach children that they are failures, they are the problem.

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

There is a brilliant child locked inside every student.