“After forty years of intensive research on school learning in the United States as well as abroad, my major conclusion is: What any person in the world can learn, almost all persons can learn if provided with appropriate prior and current conditions of learning.”

…a student attains ‘higher order thinking’ when he no longer believes in right or wrong”. “A large part of what we call good teaching is a teacher´s ability to obtain affective objectives by challenging the student’s fixed beliefs. …

Therefore, if we are effective, the distribution of grades will be anything but a normal curve. In fact, a normal curve is evidence of our failure to teach.

The normal curve is a distribution most appropriate to chance and random activity. Education is a purposeful activity and we seek to have students learn what we would teach.

A large part of what we call teaching is that the teacher should be able to use education to reorganize a child’s thoughts, attitudes, and feelings.

What any person in the world can learn, almost all persons can learn if provided with appropriate prior and current conditions of learning.

While what is superstition, fad, and myth can be recognized as such and used only when there is nothing else to support us in our frustration and despair.

Creativity follows mastery, so mastery of skills is the first priority for young talent.

We need to be much clearer about what we do and do not know so that we don’t continually confuse the two. If I could have one wish for education, it would be the systematic ordering of our basic knowledge in such a way that what is known and true can be acted on.

I’ve been producing documentaries on global warming for 20 years and have seen the early warnings of extreme weather events come true.

Failure in Afghanistan would have profound consequences for our national security. It would undermine the NATO alliance structure that has been the bedrock of Britain’s defence for the last 60 years… I will not allow this to happen on my watch.

For me, it’s been liberating to put myself in the mind of a fictitious six year-old each day, and rediscover my own curiosity.

We spend millions of dollars per year supplying more than adequate meals and a Koran to every detainee along with a prayer rug that meets their religious standards.

There’s nothing like it, but it’s not as good as you think it’s going to be. . . . I was disappointed because there are records of people finding things that have been there for years. I was hoping for a shirt button, or my club’s badge – but not a sausage.

Well we looked at all the people in the Bible and we added ’em up all the way back to Adam and Eve, their ages: 12,000 years.

As President, I will institute a procedure in which all convicted criminals will have this brass ring will be surgically implanted into their foreheads.

Twenty years ago if you provided someone with horrible service, it may take weeks or even months for the word-of-mouth message to get out to 15-20 potential customers.