“You should be able to afford health care for your family. You should be able to retire with dignity and respect. And you should be able to give your children the kind of education that allows them to dream even bigger, go even farther and accomplish even more than you could ever imagine.”

“Being the lead of the show and working a lot of hours - all good stuff, a tremendous education, incredible opportunity, it changed my life - it was a marathon, and by the end of it I was pretty beat.”

“My grandmother lived to be 100 years old. Her grandmother was a slave, yet she was a college graduate in the Spellman class of 1917. She taught art for 50 years and she saved her Social Security checks for her children's education.”

“Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfillment it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment for the individual to explore, in his own way.”

“Education should prepare our minds to use its own powers of reason and conception rather than filling it with the accumulated misconceptions of the past.”

“I'm a huge fan of music in schools and music education because that's how I grew up.”

“Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.”

“An educated people can be easily governed.”

“This is at the heart of all good education, where the teacher asks students to think and engages them in encouraging dialogues, constantly checking for understanding and growth.”