One of the things I know about the European Union is that the European Union can destroy jobs.

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.

You will never find peace when the need you cling to is not the want you desire. But when does a want become a need... when it is all you think about?

Concentrate your energies, your thoughts and your capital. The wise man puts all his eggs in one basket and watches the basket.

If when I get to heaven the Lord shall say to me, Spurgeon, I want you to preach for all eternity, I would reply, Lord, give me a Bible, that is all I need.

I believe that there have been civilisations in the past that were familiar with atomic energy, and that by misusing it they were totally destroyed.

The function of Art is to imitate Nature in her manner of operation. Our understanding of her manner of operation&Rdquo changes according to advances in the sciences.

'Do you know,' he asked in a delicious accent, 'what Dom Pérignon said after inventing champagne?' 'No?' I said. 'He called out to his fellow monks, 'Come quickly: I am tasting the stars!'

I hadn’t read a real series like that since I was a kid, and it was exciting to live again in an infinite fiction.

If you are not extreme, then people will take shortcuts because they don't fear you.

I now see that sorrow, being the supreme emotion of which man is capable, is at once the type and test of all great art.

Ours was such a delicious risk. My being abruptly and altogether Ecstatic and be-stilled.