All the time a person is a child he is both a child and learning to be a parent. After he becomes a parent he becomes predominantly a parent reliving childhood.

That's what we need nowadays is more children that have goals other than being a sports figure or some kind of celebrity. I think it's great that a kid wants to learn more and wants to be at the peak of learning especially at that young.

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.

A child's learning is a function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher.

I always found the extraordinary loss of life in the First World War very moving. I remember learning about it as a very young child as an eight- or nine-year-old asking my teachers what poppies were for. Every year the teachers would suddenly wear these red paper flowers in their lapels and I would say 'What does that mean?'

What makes a child gifted and talented may not always be good grades in school but a different way of looking at the world and learning.

I saw as a teacher how if you take that spark of learning that those children have and you ignite it you can take a child from any background to a lifetime of creativity and accomplishment.

Libraries allow children to ask questions about the world and find the answers. And the wonderful thing is that once a child learns to use a library the doors to learning are always open.

Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.

Some of the companies we helped start are names you know. An office supply company called Staples - where I'm pleased to see the Obama campaign has been shopping The Sports Authority which became a favorite of my sons. We started an early childhood learning center called Bright Horizons that First Lady Michelle Obama rightly praised.