Quotes

"As important as your obligations as a doctor, lawyer or business leader will be, you are a human being first. And these human connections with spouse, with children and with friends are the most important investments you will ever make. At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict, or closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child or a parent. One thing will never change. Fathers and Mothers, if you have children, they must come first. You must read to your children, you must hug your children and you must love your children…. Your success as a family, our success as a society depends not what happens at the White House, but what happens inside YOUR house."

- Barbara Bush

“Volunteering is the ultimate exercise in democracy. You vote in elections once a year, but when you volunteer, you vote every day about the kind of community you want to live in."

- Sue Premo

"I always wondered why somebody doesn't do something about that. Then I realized I was somebody."

- Lily Tomlin

"Families stand at the center of our society. And every family has a personal stake in promoting excellence in education. Excellence does not begin in Washington... Excellence must begin in our homes and neighborhood schools, where it's the responsibility of every parent and teacher and the right of every child."

- Ronald Reagan

"The more a man thinks, the better adapted he becomes to thinking, and education is nothing if it is not the methodical creation of the habit of thinking."

- Earnest Dimnet

"To be ignorant is not such a shame as to be unwilling to learn."

- G. W. Hoss

"The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals... We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education"

- Martin Luther King Jr.

“Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve…. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Few of us will do the spectacular deeds of heroism that spread themselves across the pages of our newspapers in big black headlines. But we can all be heroic in the little things of everyday life. We can do the helpful things, say the kind words, meet our difficulties with courage and high hearts, stand up for the right when the cost is high, keep our word even though it means sacrifice, be a giver instead of a destroyer. Often this quiet, humble heroism is the greatest heroism of all."

- Wilferd Peterson

"For I have learned the truth: there are greater pursuits than self-seeking. Glory is not a conceit. It is not a decoration for valor. It is not a prize for being the most clever, the strongest, or the boldest. Glory belongs to the act of being constant to something greater than yourself, to a cause, to your principles, to the people on whom you rely, and who rely on you in return. No misfortune, no injury, no humiliation can destroy it."

- John McCain (Faith of My Fathers)

"Those who say that we're in a time when there are not heroes, they just don't know where to look. You can see heroes every day going in and out of factory gates. Others, a handful in number, produce enough food to feed all of us and then the world beyond. You meet heroes across a counter, and they're on both sides of that counter. There are entrepreneurs with faith in themselves and faith in an idea who create new jobs, new wealth and opportunity. They're individuals and families whose taxes support the government and whose voluntary gifts support church, charity, culture, art, and education. Their patriotism is quiet, but deep. Their values sustain our national life."

- Ronald Reagan

"We are at a junction point in public education - I consider the personalization of learning the greatest challenge of our time. Personalization is essential for a great and effective education for our diverse student populations. We must create deep relationships with our students - and our students with what they are studying. Our approach must become increasingly diverse and customized to meet the needs and strengths of the array of learners we are serving. This involves several non-negotiable elements, including a developmental (rather than fixed) focus on learning; design-based learning that addresses every student's interests, needs, and aspirations; learning goals that are meaningful, authentic, and competency-based; and instructional and assessment approaches that reinforce real-world problem solving and imagination of the learner."

- William Hite

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."

- The Lorax (Dr. Seuss)

"Complaining about a problem without proposing a solution is called whining."

- Unknown (often attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, but I have not been able to confirm this)

“Volunteers do not necessarily have the time; they just have the heart.”

- Elizabeth Andrew

“You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give.”

- Winston Churchill

"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest."

- Benjamin Franklin

"A new truth is a truth, an old error is an error."
- Benjamin Franklin

"The more ignorant we become the less value we set on science, and the less inclination we shall have to seek it."
- Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Adams)

"... there is nothing, which can better deserve your patronage, than the promotion of Science and Literature. Knowledge is in every Country the surest basis of public happiness."
- George Washington (during his first State of the Union Address, 1/8/1790)

“Now and in the years ahead, we need, more than anything else, the honest and uncompromising common sense of science. Science means a method of thought. That method is characterized by open-mindedness, honesty, perseverance, and, above all, by an unflinching passion for knowledge and truth. When more of the peoples of the world have learned the ways of thought of the scientist, we shall have better reason to expect lasting peace and a fuller life for all”
- Harry S. Truman (Address to the Centennial Anniversary AAAS Annual Meeting, 1948)

"High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation."

- Charles F. Kettering

"Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation."

- John F. Kennedy

"We pay a price when we deprive children of the exposure to the values, principles, and education they need to make them good citizens."

- Sandra Day O'Connor

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."

- Nelson Mandela

"If we teach today's students as we taught yesterday's, we rob them of tomorrow."

- John Dewey

"Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire."

- William Yeats

“If we teach only the findings and products of science—no matter how useful and even inspiring they may be—without communicating its critical method, how can the average person possibly distinguish science from pseudoscience?”

- Carl Sagan

“The best investment for one year is to grow grains; the best investment for ten years is to grow trees; the best investment for a lifetime is to educate people."
- Guan Zhong (720-545 BCE)

"The person who graduates today and stops learning tomorrow is uneducated the day after."
- Anonymous

"Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and diligence."
- Abigail Adams

"If a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilization, it expects what was & never will be."
- Thomas Jefferson

"This is what we leave to our children. And our great moral responsibility is to leave it to them either as we found it or better than we found it."
- Ronald Reagan (Speech to National Geographic Society, 1984)

“What we need are critical lovers of America - patriots who express their faith in their country by working to improve it.”
- Hubert Humphrey

"There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America."
- Bill Clinton

"Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future."
- John F. Kennedy

"There is nothing I dread So much as a Division of the Republick into two great Parties, each arranged under its Leader, and concerting Measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble Apprehension is to be dreaded as the greatest political Evil, under our Constitution."
- John Adams (letter to Jonathan Jackson, 10/2/1780)

“The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.”
- Thomas Paine (A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal on the Affairs of North America)

"Everyone you'll ever meet knows something you don't [...] Because when you acknowledge that everyone you meet knows something you don't, it means you're gonna respect them. And when we have respect for each other, then we can communicate. You know, we all have a tendency to think we know the answer when we really don't, but this leads to problems. But if we respect each other-- if we acknowledge that other people have knowledge that we don't, then we can address these big issues."
- Bill Nye