I am sure it is one's duty as a teacher to try to show boys that no opinions no tastes no emotions are worth much unless they are one's own. I suffered acutely as a boy from the lack of being shown this.

In a Glasser Quality School there is no such thing as a closed book test. Students are told to get out their notes and open their books. There is no such thing as being forbidden to ask the teacher or another student for help.

If I can make a teacher's salary doing comedy I think that's better than being a teacher.

I have to express sympathy from the bottom of my heart to those people who were taken as wartime comfort women. As a human being I would like to express my sympathies and also as prime minister of Japan I need to apologize to them.

There's no greater way to gain an audience's sympathy than by being unfortunate.

I have a theory because I was being beaten up a lot by people outside of school it was almost like if I could make myself sick enough they'd take sympathy on me.

I'm in total sympathy with Dick Smith's sentiments I only wish there were grounds for saying we Australians would never tolerate such appalling treatment of refugees being carried out in our name.

It's no good being nice and young and naive. There's no good in that at all. You've got to do it all yourself and you've gotta learn quick. And you can't look for sympathy either.

Life has never been easy. Nor is it meant to be. It is a matter of being joyous in the face of sorrow.

I think that everything you do helps you to write if you're a writer. Adversity and success both contribute largely to making you what you are. If you don't experience either one of those you're being deprived of something.