“If we had in this room a hundred teachers, good teachers from good schools, and asked them to define the word education, there would be very little general agreement.”

“I believe in education and wish I had a better one.”

“Natural ability without education has more often attained to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.”

“Violence is black children going to school for 12 years and receiving 6 years' worth of education.”

“It goes against the grain of modern education to teach students to program. What fun is there to making plans, acquiring discipline, organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be self critical.”

“I went to drama school for four years at Carnegie Mellon, conservatory training before television comedy. I was doing Shakespeare and Chekov plays. It's about delivering on the promise of a $100,000 education and taking the shackles off and trying the hand at my craft. I'm thrilled with what I've seen so far.”

“The main failure of education is that it has not prepared people to comprehend matters concerning human destiny.”

“Where the private sector, or anyone else, has skills, knowledge and resources that can help to deliver a high quality of education and to raise standards, we should use them.”

“What we're doing now is we're saying that individual schools can spend the money on their own priorities, so that head teachers can decide what's truly important, because the big shift in approach on education that we're taking - which is different from what happened before - is that we trust teachers and we trust heads.”