What makes this story so remarkable is that throughout my early childhood I had ongoing learning difficulties particularly in mathematics. I struggled to learn the multiplication table and no matter how hard I tried I simply couldn't remember 6 times 7 or 7 times 8.

It's tempting to say the Ph.D. didn't have an effect but it's not so. I think whatever resonance I may be able to achieve is in part simply from the amount of reading and learning that I acquired along the way.

But the basic Taoism that we are concerned with here is simply a particular way of appreciating learning from and working with whatever happens in everyday life.

During the days of segregation there was not a place of higher learning for African Americans. They were simply not welcome in many of the traditional schools. And from this backward policy grew the network of historical black colleges and universities.

Perhaps I am doomed to retrace my steps under the illusion that I am exploring doomed to try and learn what I should simply recognize learning a mere fraction of what I have forgotten.

Such highly qualitative leadership is demanded especially in the realm of the fostering of right international relations. Here the demand is simply irresistible.

Leadership is simply the ability of an individual to coalesce the efforts of other individuals toward achieving common goals. It boils down to looking after your people and ensuring that from top to bottom everyone feels part of the team.

World War II had been such a tremendous success story for this country that the political and military leadership began to assume that they would prevail simply because of who they were. We were like the British at the turn of the 19th century.

That is what leadership is all about: staking your ground ahead of where opinion is and convincing people not simply following the popular opinion of the moment.

This Congress is simply not doing its job under Republican leadership.