What troubles me most about my lovely country is that its children are seldom taught that American freedom will vanish, if, when they grow up, and in the exercise of their duties as citizens, they insist that our courts and policemen and prisons be guided by divine or natural law.

You know that being an American is more than a matter of where your parents came from. It is a belief that all men are created free and equal and that everyone deserves an even break.

Education can become a self-fulfilling activity, liberating in and of itself.

I can’t imagine what it is like to be raised in a society where their only statues that exist are to you and your father.

Old men are dangerous: it doesn’t matter to them what is going to happen to the world.

Things in our country run in spite of government, not by aid of it.

My kids are coming up in a different time then me. Interracial couples are of the norm. With me, it’s about making sure my kids understand the importance of education and having opportunities that I didn’t. My goal as a parent is to make sure they don’t take what they have for granted.

It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.

Sometimes, it’s just easier to say yes to that extra snack or dessert, because frankly, it is exhausting to keep saying no. It’s exhausting to plead with our kids to eat just one more bite of vegetables.

Your children will see what you’re all about by what you live rather than what you say.

I’m sorry, it’s true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much – if at all.

I think a lot of things that are the norm, that are very systematic, don’t work.

People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.

Adults are obsolete children.

Common Core is a big win for education.

Where do the evils like corruption arise from? It comes from the never-ending greed. The fight for corruption-free ethical society will have to be fought against this greed and replace it with ‚what can I give‘ spirit.

Creativity is the key to success in the future, and primary education is where teachers can bring creativity in children at that level.

My son complains about headaches. I tell him all the time, when you get out of bed, it’s feet first!

Many parents and teachers have become irritated to the point of distraction at the way the weed-style growth of ‚like‘ has spread through the idiom of the young. And it’s true that in some cases the term has become simultaneously a crutch and a tic, driving out the rest of the vocabulary as candy expels vegetables.

The one thing I want to leave my children is an honorable name.

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.

Storytelling is a very old human skill that gives us an evolutionary advantage. If you can tell young people how you kill an emu, acted out in song or dance, or that Uncle George was eaten by a croc over there, don’t go there to swim, then those young people don’t have to find out by trial and error.

I see children, all children, as humanity’s most precious resource, because it will be to them that the care of the planet will always be left.

I will never say something I don’t agree with or believe in… even if the reward is massive!

If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists – to protect them and to promote their common welfare – all else is lost.

All of the people in my life whom I consider to be close friends or colleagues are good thinkers.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out… without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.

It is very nearly impossible… to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

I believe in this concept that you learn by teaching.

Music is always a commentary on society.

Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle.

My heart aches for America and its deceived people.

Whenever a youth is ascertained to possess talents meriting an education which his parents cannot afford, he should be carried forward at the public expense.

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.

Children, I mean, think of your own childhood, how important the bedtime story was. How important these imaginary experiences were for you. They helped shape reality, and I think human beings wouldn’t be human without narrative fiction.

There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.

Military school was great and especially great for leadership and then I spent two years in Vietnam.

College isn’t in everyone’s hearts. I am living proof, though, that school doesn’t mess up your plans. It gives you more experiences to write about.

In order that all men may be taught to speak the truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.

Our society is illuminated by the spiritual insights of the Hebrew prophets. America and Israel have a common love of human freedom, and they have a common faith in a democratic way of life.

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

I did go to Wellesley, a women’s college. And I am of a kind of strange generation which is transitional in terms of women who wanted to go out and get jobs.

Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.

No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.

It is better to die than to preserve this life by incurring disgrace. The loss of life causes but a moment’s grief, but disgrace brings grief every day of one’s life.

Do you know what you call those who use towels and never wash them, eat meals and never do the dishes, sit in rooms they never clean, and are entertained till they drop? If you have just answered, ‚A house guest,‘ you’re wrong because I have just described my kids.

My music fights against the system that teaches to live and die.

In Japan, the writers have made up a literary community, a circle, a society. I think 90 percent of Japan’s writers live in Tokyo. Naturally, they make a community. There are groups and customs, and so they are tied up in a way.

In our ecclesiastical region there are priests who don’t baptize the children of single mothers because they weren’t conceived in the sanctity of marriage. These are today’s hypocrites. Those who clericalize the church. Those who separate the people of God from salvation.

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

The lessons of history would suggest that civilisations move in cycles. You can track that back quite far – the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by the Egyptians, the Romans, China. We’re obviously in a very upward cycle right now, and hopefully that remains the case. But it may not.

I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.

A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.

Optimism comes less easily today, not because democracy is less vigorous, but because democracy’s enemies have refined their instruments of repression.

We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.

We ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue.

As a father, safety is always a top of mind issue for me.