I remember my mum explaining to me what adoption meant when I was still at primary school. 'Son,' she said to me, 'you didn't grow under my heart, you grew in it'.

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.

The desert was a school, a school where each day, each hour, a final examination was offered, where failure meant death and the buzzards landed to correct the papers.

They were free to be what they wanted to be, and what they wanted to be was nothing.

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

This document [the Reconstruction and Development Programme] was translated into a simpler manifesto called 'A Better Life for All', which in turn became the ANC's campaign slogan.

Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good.

He was bested by a better fighter, ...I didn't feel like he was intimidated. If I made a mistake he would have punished me.

To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race.

These different people that I play become the loves of my life.

It started out as a typically insane idea to map every part of the published text in terms of its manuscript provenance and history, and to establish the cultural meaning of the book, part and whole.

The only thing a man can take beyond this lifetime is his ethics.