No Child Left Behind's fourth-grade gains aren't learning gains they're testing gains. That's why they don't last. The law is a distraction from things that really count.

In many ways it was much much harder to get the first book contract. The hardest thing probably overall has been learning not to trust people publicists and so forth implicitly.

It is sad that the Republican leadership is not as interested as they say they are in protecting the institution of marriage as they are in waging a campaign to divide and distract the American people from the real issues that need to be addressed.

I'm not a natural leader. I'm too intellectual I'm too abstract I think too much.

The satirist is prevented by repulsion from gaining a better knowledge of the world he is attracted to yet he is forced by attraction to concern himself with the world that repels him.

Each department of knowledge passes through three stages. The theoretic stage the theological stage and the metaphysical or abstract stage.

Music is at once the product of feeling and knowledge for it requires from its disciples composers and performers alike not only talent and enthusiasm but also that knowledge and perception which are the result of protracted study and reflection.

You make knowledge relevant to life and you make it important for children to learn things that will really relate to things going on in their lives and not abstract.

Just like I find men who talk sports who don't really know sports annoying I think men might find women who don't really have a true passion and knowledge of sports maybe not so attractive.

Exclusively of the abstract sciences the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism.