It was a tough choice [of PM]. I voted for a Scotsman.

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.

Never give up anything your destiny demands while in search of temporary pleasures.

Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.

Somewhere between obsession and compulsion is impulse.

I'd had a vaguely Jewish upbringing, but no deep connection to faith.

I cannot imagine any crime worse than taking a life, can you? -It'd depend whose life.

There has always been excuses for wars, but NONE of them have been good or valid.

The English public doesn't really like Shakespeare; it prefers football.

When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it.

Creation's heir, the world, the world is mine!

I don't really have the time or energy to be bad.