Adopting means opening your home, and heart, to a life you've never known. But there is nothing as richly rewarding as being an adoptive parent.

The single most important thing in a child's performance is the quality of the teacher. Making sure a child spends the maximum amount of time with inspirational teachers is the most important thing.

It is literally the case that learning languages makes you smarter. The neural networks in the brain strengthen as a result of language learning.

Learning a foreign language, and the culture that goes with it, is one of the most useful things we can do to broaden the empathy and imaginative sympathy and cultural outlook of children.

For a few spotty years, I was that tragic geek

Proper history teaching is being crushed under the weight of play-based pedagogy which infantilises children, teachers and our culture.

I'm a decentralizer. I believe in trusting professionals.

It's often the case that successful people invite criticism.

I have come, reluctantly, to the conclusion that Boris [Johnson] cannot provide the leadership or build the team for the task ahead.

I have a different starting premise from those 100 academics who are so heavily invested in the regime of low expectations and narrow horizons which they have created.

I will take all the steps necessary to give the NHS at least another £100million per week by 2020.

Wake! For the Sun, who scatter'd into flightThe Stars before him from the Field of Night, Drives Night along with them from Heav'n, and strikesThe Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light

Life is all about discovery

Keep the faith. Allow Christ full reign in your life.

Your tears come easy, when you're young, and beginning the world. Your tears come easy, when you're old, and leaving it. I burst out crying.

Be amusing: never tell unkind stories; above all, never tell long ones.

Let me love Thee so that the honour, riches, and pleasures of the world may seem unworthy even of hatred - may not even be encumbrances.

One can descend by imperceptible degree from the most perfect creature to the most shapeless matter, from the best-organised animal to the roughest mineral.

And home pregnancy tests? They are so last century. Nowadays, I think there's an app that calls your iPhone to warn you that if you finish that third cosmo, you may wind up with a wombmate.

Never forget that at the end of the day, as a creative person, your résumé is all you've got.

I don't think it really matters, who plays first. Whatever they do, they do.