“Education can’t make us all leaders, but it can teach us which leader to follow.”

I feel no different than I felt at 99, 98 or 97. Just because you live a long time, you get all this attention. Just because you survived? Of course, I survived a lot.

A teacher is frequently the only adult in the pupil’s environment who treats him with respect.

Never mind the cream; it will always rise to the top. It’s the skim milk that needs good teachers.

One of my students had written wistfully of a dream-school that would have “windows with trees in them.

I like the word OLD. Not senior, that’s for proms. Older? Older than whom? ‘Old’ is honorable and ripe

Teachers try to make us feel lower than themselves, maybe because this is because they feel lower than outside people. One teacher told me to get out of the room and never come back, which I did.

My mother, for example, has the pleasant notion that my day consists of nodding graciously to the rustle of starched curtsies and a chorus of respectful voices bidding me good morning.

To the young, cliches seem freshly minted.

You can’t laugh and be angry, you can’t laugh and feel sad, you can’t laugh and feel envious.

I’ll never retire as long as I live—that’s like retiring from life! I’ll never stop writing, teaching, lecturing. If you’re in good health, living is exciting on its own.

The preciousness of every moment is emphasized with every tick of the clock. Isn’t it a magnificent day today?

I suggest just Good and Bad at the end of the term on report cards. Or maybe nothing. Frank Allen

I am writing this during my lunch period, because I need to reach towards the outside world of sanity, because I am overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the clerical work still to be done, and because at this hour of the morning normal ladies are still sleeping.

To the outside world, of course, this job is a cinch: 9 to 3, five days a week, two months’ summer vacation with pay, all legal holidays, prestige and respect.

Time collapses and expands like an erratic accordion.

The clerical work is par for the course. “Keep on file in numerical order” means throw in wastebasket. You’ll soon learn the language.

Labor is like motherhood to most of our political leaders: a calling so fine and noble that it would be sullied by talk of vulgar, mundane things like pay.

I have been urging the leaders to listen to the aspirations and challenges of their own people, and engage in dialogue and take very bold measures. Normally, to their regret, these measures and bold reforms come too late, too little.

So I like the work he’s doing, and I support it, and I realise that he’s one of very few political leaders around the world that actually has early-childhood development strategise at the top of his agenda.

Tories never actually talk about getting rid of their leader, then suddenly there us a flash of steel between he shoulder-blades and rigormortis sets in.

We can’t be confined to one way of thinking, and that terrifies our leaders. It means we can’t be controlled. And it means that no matter what they do, we will always cause trouble for them.

A person always doing his or her best becomes a natural leader, just by example.

A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others.

I respect order and it really gave me the discipline to be a leader and not a follower. It also helped me stay out of trouble.