A top-quartile teacher will increase the performance of their class - based on test scores - by over 10 percent in a single year. ... That means that if the entire U.S., for two years, had top-quartile teachers, the entire difference between us and Asia would go away.
"Everyone knew it was impossible, until a fool who didn't know came along and did it."
"Find joy in the journey."
If something's expensive to develop, and somebody's not going to get paid, it won't get developed. So you decide: Do you want software to be written, or not?
Good moral character is not something that we can achieve on our own. We need a culture that supports the conditions under which self-love and friendship flourish.
"Truth, for any man, is that which makes him a man."
Contrary to popular belief, I don't spend a whole lot of time following soccer. But as I have traveled around the world to better understand global development and health, I've learned that soccer is truly universal. No matter where I go, that's what kids are playing. That's what people are talking about.
Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.
The most interesting biofuel efforts avoid using land that's expensive and has high opportunity costs. They do this by getting onto other types of land, or taking advantage of byproducts that aren't used in the food chain today, or by intercropping.
It is really gratifying, for example, to visit India now and see that because they've had good educational institutions, and they've had a focus on it, there are more and more people in India participating in the world economy.
Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.
Hopefully, whether it's energy or child vaccines, the case of the many benefits helping countries so that they are stable, so these refugee problems that have been troubling for Europe - a little less so for the U.S. but, even so, a lot of controversy there - these things are why the future's going to be better than the past. People really do look to the United States, so we'll be there making the case.
"If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor."
I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.
"The better it gets, the better it gets."
"What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it."
The more you know, the more you know you don't know.
All art is concerned with coming into being; for it is concerned neither with things that are, or come into being by necessity, nor with things that do so in accordance with nature.
"Genius is making complex ideas simple, not making simple ideas complex."
India should walk on her own shadow - we must have our own development model.
“The willow which bends to the tempest, often escapes better than the oak which resists it; and so in great calamities, it sometimes happens that light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind sooner than those of a loftier character.”
The greatest victory is over self.
"* if someone loves a flower, of which just one single blossom grows, in all the millions of stars, it is enough to make him happy just to look at the stars."
The true nature of a thing is the highest it can become.
"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice."
In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.
“When people have light in themselves, it will shine out from them. Then we get to know each other as we walk together in the darkness, without needing to pass our hands over each other's faces, or to intrude into each other's hearts.”
"Worrying is using your imagination to create something you don't want."
Capitalism has shortfalls. It doesn't necessarily take care of the poor, and it underfunds innovation, so we have to offset that.
Life is a party. Dress for it.
There is only one condition in which we can imagine managers not needing subordinates, and masters not needing slaves. This condition would be that each (inanimate) instrument could do its own work.
“Don't stop to ask whether the animal or plant you meet deserves your sympathy, or how much it feels, or even whether it can feel at all: respect it and consider all life sacred.”
Success is a miserable teacher. It tempts intelligent people to believe they cannot lose. And it is an unreliable guide to the future.
Creating a piece of software is always complicated because you're doing something new. If you just wanted something that had been done before you'd just use that old piece of software. So there are no repetitive tasks.
"Education is not received. It is achieved."
"A man has many parts, he is virtually everything, and you are free to select in him that part which pleases you."
When you program, you want to think you're writing the best possible program for the... for the task you're trying to solve.
You come to realize that life is short, and you have to step up. Don't feel sorry for me. Much is expected of those who are strong.
We are what we continually do.
The same things are best both for individuals and for states, and these are the things which the legislator ought to implant in the minds of his citizens.
I speak for those children who cannot speak for themselves, children who have absolutely nothing but their courage and their smiles, their wits and their dreams.
"Navigating by the compass in a sea of clouds over Spain is all very well, it is very dashing, but - you want to remember that below the sea of clouds lies eternity."
A quality education has the power to transform societies in a single generation, provide children with the protection they need from the hazards of poverty, labor exploitation and disease, and given them the knowledge, skills, and confidence to reach their full potential.
"Art is the expression of the profoundest thoughts in the simplest way."
In inner-city, low-income communities of color, there's such a high correlation in terms of educational quality and success.
It Is Very Easy To Defeat Someone, But It Is Very Hard To Win Someone
Even for the diseases we don't focus on, cancer, heart disease, you're going to be way better off being sick 10 years from now than any time in the past.
I think there certainly was a milestone in the '90s with regards to the Internet achieving critical mass. There were several magical factors that came together: the creation of HTML by Tim Berners-Lee, the drop in the price of communications, and all the PCs out there that you could put this software into.
“In the hopes of reaching the moon men fail to see the flowers that blossom at their feet.”
All learning is derived from things previously known.
"We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams."
"The first and most natural way of lighting the houses of the American colonists, both in the North and South, was by the pine-knots of the fat pitch-pine, which, of course, were found everywhere in the greatest plenty in the forests."
"I get worried for young girls sometimes; I want them to feel that they can be sassy and full and weird and geeky and smart and independent, and not so withered and shriveled."
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.
"Stop talking about the way things are, unless you like them."
Who in their right mind would ever need more than 640k of ram!?
In my parents I saw a model where they were really always communicating, doing things together. They were really kind of a team. I wanted some of that magic myself.
Republicans are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar.
The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
"The answer to a lot of your life's questions is often in someone else's face. People's faces will tell you amazing things. Like if they are angry, or nauseous, or asleepTry to keep your mind open to possibilities and your mouth closed on matters that you don't know about. Limit your 'always' and your 'nevers.' Continue to share your heart with people even if it has been broken."
The good of man is the active exercise of his soul's faculties. This exercise must occupy a complete lifetime. One swallow does make a spring, nor does one fine day. Excellence is a habit, not an event.
If we have no friends we have no pleasure and if we have them we are sure to lose them and be doubly pained by the loss.
If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.
"This is a universe of vibration. As Einstein once observed, “Nothing happens until something moves”-that is, everything vibrates to a particular measurable frequency."
"The harder you work, the luckier you get."
We [US] are the biggest per person, by a substantial amount, greenhouse emitters, and we give the most foreign aid, not per person but in absolute. This is another issue where hopefully we will take a long-term approach which, even though we sometimes have a hard time doing that, it's easier for us, as a rich country with this kind of scientific depth, than it is for the poor countries who will suffer the problems.
Software was changing so fast, so unbelievable, that that got very quick adoption.
"Happiness depends upon ourselves."
"A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral."
I have great respect for the semicolon; it is a mighty handy little fellow.
The goal of war is peace, of business, leisure
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."
"You are not here to fix anything, because nothing is broken, but everything is continually changing and expanding. Release your struggle, and seek joy and fun, and in doing so, you will align with the fantastic expanding rhythm of this Universe."
"Those who cannot work with their hearts achieve but a hollow halfhearted success that breeds bitterness all around"
You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
What would be awful would be to die and look back miserably - seeing only the bad things, the opportunities missed, or what could have been.
“We need a boundless ethics which will include animals also.”
"Not all things worth counting are countable and not all things that count are worth counting."
"The supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction. There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them."
"The greatest activity of which man is capable: Opening up yet another fragment of the frontier of beauty."
Promise me one thing: don't take me home until I'm drunk - very drunk indeed.
The bad man is continually at war with, and in opposition to, himself.
"We need to remember what's important in life: friends, waffles, work. Or waffles, friends, work, it doesn't matter. But work is third."
"When your children arrive, the best you can hope for is that they break open everything about you. Your mind floods with oxygen. Your heart becomes a room with wide-open windows. You laugh hard every day."
"The fastest way to bring more wonderful examples of abundance into your personal experience is to take constant notice of the wonderful things that are already there."
In K-12, almost everybody goes to local schools. Universities are a bit different because kids actually do pick the university. The bizarre thing, though, is that the merit of university is actually how good the students going in are: the SAT scores of the kids going in.
My success, part of it certainly, is that I have focused in on a few things.
Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.
"There's only, like, five perfectly symmetrical people in the world, and they're all movie stars, and they should be, because their faces are very pleasing to look at, but the rest of us are just a jangle of stuff, and the earlier you learn that you should focus on what you have and not obsess about what you don't have, the happier you will be."
"If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things."
Even in some of our vaccine areas, like an AIDS vaccine, things have taken longer than we expected, but we have the pipeline of tools. The biological information that we have that gives us insights is fantastic.
"Right now I'm singing along to books on tape. I typically pop in something like Stephen King's 'The Stand,' and I love singing along to that kind of stuff."
"Success comes from curiosity, concentration, perseverance and self criticism."
If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature's way.
Taking a look back, one big reqret is, I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world. The appalling disparities of health and wealth and opportunity that condemned millions of people to the lives of despair. I learned a lot here at Harvard about new ideas and economics, and politics. I got great exposure to the advances being made in the sciences. But humanities greatest advances are not in its discoveries, but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity.
Men come together in cities in order to live: they remain together in order to live the good life
I hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you have addressed the world's deepest inequities...on how well you treated people a world away who have nothing in common with you but your humanity.
I've been lucky. Opportunities don't often come along. So, when they do, you have to grab them.
Don't worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.
I love the sea.
Our virtues are voluntary (and in fact we are in a sense ourselves partly the cause of our moral dispositions, and it is our having a certain character that makes us set up an end of a certain kind), it follows that our vices are voluntary also; they are voluntary in the same manner as our virtues.
Law is mind without reason.
Unfortunately, the highly curious student is a small percentage of the kids.
"Give them a conscious understanding of how powerful and important and valuable and perfect they are."
The specific excellence of verbal expression in poetry is to be clear without being low.
You know, I'm a big believer in touch and digital reading, but I still think that some mixture of voice, the pen and a real keyboard - in other words a netbook - will be the mainstream on that.
