True intelligence requires fabulous imagination.

I apologize for being obvious, but every time I watch the curtain come down on even a halfway decent production of a Shakespeare play I feel a little sorrowful that I'll never know the man, or any man of such warm intelligence.

I think of novels in architectural terms. You have to enter at the gate, and this gate must be constructed in such a way that the reader has immediate confidence in the strength of the building.

I want to live in a place where strangers rush to help someone in distress.

DonorsChoose was conceived at a Bronx public high school where I taught social studies for five years. In the teachers' lunch room, my colleagues and I often lamented a problem that drained learning from students and creativity from teachers: a lack of funding for essential materials and for the activities that bring subject matter to life.

The great end of education is to discipline rather than to furnish the mind; to train it to the use of its own powers, rather than fill it with the accumulation of others.

I fervently believe that education is the key to moving forward.

Lower standards tell students that they don't need to work hard and leave more high school students unprepared for college and the workplace.