Ever since going up to university, I have accumulated new debt, and new means of becoming indebted.

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.

When pretending starts, growth stops

You gotta be willing to face, every fear! Climb, every mountain! Defy, every odd!

That which distinguishes this day from all others is that then both orators and artillerymen shoot blank cartridges.

Life consists of a long chain of coincidences.

When I got to the Senate, one of the things that most bothered me is this lack of urgency about the major issues.

Poor but happy is not a phrase invented by a poor person.

Today the two hundred million men in our country are entering into a civilized new world...but we, the two hundred million women, are still kept down in the dungeon.

I like to think each writer is doing his or her part. Feeding the lake, as Jean Rhys said. And maybe there are different lakes.

We have, in our day, witnessed the birth of the Therapeutic State. This is perhaps the major implication of psychiatry as an institution of social control.

Communists liked history very much. It just had to be the right history. They liked to remember it selectively.