Quotes

People think of teachers who are born to teach, and you think of all these charismatic folks. Some of the most successful teachers are some of the least charismatic, interestingly. But they have a gift of figuring out what motivates people.

If we could reach the point where many of our nation's future leaders know what teachers know after teaching successfully in our highest-need schools, we would have a very different situation.

We're not trying to be the only route into teaching. We do put enormous energy into understanding what differentiates the most successful teachers.

In every case where I've seen a transformational school, there's a principal who really has the foundational experience of having taught successfully.

If I make two movies my entire life, and they're two movies that - whether they make a lot of money or two people go to see them - they speak of me, then I consider them incredibly successful. I don't need to be Steven Spielberg.

Every movie that I've had to really knock down the door for has been an enormous success for me. Not just like a financial success but a real personal success.

The world is littered with movies about people that are depressed that either did not come out or are not successful.

While I started out with a vague understanding that diversity would be important, my own observations have led me to realize that achieving greater levels of diversity is in fact vital to our long-term success.

More often than not, the most effective leaders have been shaped by teaching successfully in high needs classrooms. Because of their experience, they know that it is possible for low-income children to achieve on an absolute scale and understand what we need to do to allow them to fulfill their potential.

As a founder of two organizations that recruit top college graduates to expand educational opportunity, I've spent a lot of time examining what's at work in successful classrooms and schools over the past two decades.

The idea that computers can ever replace teachers and schools reveals a deep lack of understanding about the role leadership plays in student success.

I didn't come to L.A. thinking, okay, I'm going to be an actor, so my progression was just kind of organic, starting in print modeling, which I was far less successful in, then acting in television commercials.

I went to business school so what they teach you in business school was that success is about positioning yourself to get lucky. It's not just about how hard you work. It is also about a little bit of luck. To position yourself to catch the luck when it comes.

My music is very innovative, in a class by itself. Nobody else is saying anything of value. What I'm trying to do is get people to think, to alter their consciousness. It's not your typical platinum formula for success.

Head Start's ability to improve the educational skills and opportunities of Latino children will be an important component of America's future success.

I'm a very competitive person, but competitive with myself. I want to be the best that I can be, and if that means that I'm eventually better than everyone else, then so be it. But I don't go around comparing and contrasting myself with other actors if I can help it. It's also, I think, the key to my success.

Presumptuous for me to say, but at least - at a minimum - I've been able to influence the direction of the Democratic Party on foreign policy. And I've been relatively - presumptuous to say - relatively successful legislatively in the Senate, being able to win a lot of Republican friends, and being able to cross the aisle.

Basically, I've found that if you have two films that don't perform well, it doesn't matter that you've had a bunch of successful ones. The phone stops ringing, and after 'Deadly Blessing' and 'Swamp Thing,' that's what happened.

When it comes to the singing part, I think I missed the boat - the whole family can sing except for me. But they can't fight, so I suppose I've been a bit more successful than them there.

Rather than allowing students and teachers to celebrate their success, some would rather we measure success in Britain in terms of failure; that our education system can only truly be of a high standard if significant numbers lose out. This is no way to build a world-class education system.

The enormous success of 2009's 'The Blind Side,' in which Sandra Bullock makes a black teenager one of the family, demonstrates that America isn't post-racial. It is thoroughly mired in race - the myths that surround it, the guilt it inspires, the discomfort it causes, the struggle to transcend it.

If a movie is successful, they come out with copies.

Hollywood only recognizes big successes and big failures.

Everybody is constantly putting themselves under a microscope in terms of their productivity and their financial success and this whole idea of 'Picture Me Better,' like picture me, you know, who I'm supposed to be versus, you know, just accepting who we all are.

Fact is we went on to do other things. But we still wanted to do our success like rock'n'roll stars.