"No Child Left Behind's fourth-grade gains aren't learning gains, they're testing gains. That's why they don't last. The law is a distraction from things that really count."

"By far the most important factor in the success or failure of any school, far more important than tests or standards or business-model methods of accountability, is simply attracting the best-educated, most exciting young people into urban schools and keeping them there."

"The contrasts between what is spent today to educate a child in the poorest New York City neighborhoods, where teacher salaries are often even lower than the city averages, and spending levels in the wealthiest suburban areas are daunting challenges to any hope New Yorkers might retain that even semblances of fairness still prevail."

"I feel, in the end, as if everything I've done has been a failure."

"I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. And much more."

"It is a profound truth that to lead with integrity is to walk the narrow path where words and actions are one — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"It is a quiet truth that stillness is not emptiness; it is the presence of unencumbered clarity."

"The Cause of Women is generally the Cause of Virtue."