When I was eight years old, I got a dummy for Christmas and started teaching myself. I got books and records and sat in front of the bathroom mirror, practising. I did my first show in the third grade and just kept going; there was no reason to quit.

The notion of superhumans is using bioengineering and artificial intelligence to upgrade human abilities. If they use the power to change themselves, to change their own minds, their own desires, then we have no idea what they will want to do.

I think the Smart Car is awesome. The only problem is I've been on the freeway and felt like I was going to be blown away like a Tim Hortons coffee cup, so I may have to upgrade to a Mini Cooper - something a little stronger.

Had my own car at twelve years old. Left school in the tenth grade. Married when I was sixteen. Ain't hard to figure out; I was a man at a very young age.

I remember listening to Miles Davis in the car with my dad. I had just done my Grade 5 piano exam, and I was quite cocky. I said, 'It sounds like he's played the wrong note there.' I remember the look of horror on my dad's face, and thinking, 'Wow, I have to figure out why that is not acceptable.'

It's not just the kid who's spent every penny from his job to upgrade his car to tell the world he cares about sports cars, it's also the person driving around in a fuel-conscious hybrid electric car, because it's more a message to the world than an effective means of saving fuel, to be quite honest.

I remember the one time, when I was in the 10th grade and the school president, my entire school had surprised me with a birthday song during the morning assembly. It will always be a very special memory!

I remember the first time that I realized that being black meant that I wasn't allowed certain things. It was in the fourth grade, and it was who I thought was my best friend not inviting me to his birthday party because I would be the only black kid there. It was the first time I ever felt restricted, and it certainly wasn't the last time.

We have an obligation and a responsibility to be investing in our students and our schools. We must make sure that people who have the grades, the desire and the will, but not the money, can still get the best education possible.

As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.

The foundation of empire is art and science. Remove them or degrade them, and the empire is no more. Empire follows art and not vice versa as Englishmen suppose.

In grade school I was taught that the United States is a melting pot. People from all over the world come here for freedom and to pursue a better life. They arrive with next to nothing, work incredibly hard, learn a new language and new customs, and in a generation they become an integral part of our amazing nation.

The teacher pulled out a pile of papers. They were Bennie's tests and homework assignments. Mrs. Lewis said, "Ma'am, here is the proof that Bennie isn't up to a fourth grade level. He has an F on several of these assignments. In fact, a zero grade is too high for some of Bennie's work this last year.

We have become a generation of using big English words to box, manipulate, degrade, dehumanize and to abuse other people. Especially if those people are not doing what we like or what we want them to do.

It seems like we are choosing to became a generation of using big words to box, manipulate, degrade, dehumanize and to abuse other people. Especially if those are not doing what we like or what we want.?E.g ( a real man must do this or a real women must do this). We are projecting our thoughts and experiences to others and trying to position them ,the way we want them. Let's choose to respect other people opinions, choices , preferences, lifestyle and life.

I know, but it reminds me that I have no control over life. Life doesn't care if you're a soldier or a seventh grader or an aquatic reptile. Things happen.

What's so magical about solitude? In many fields, Ericsson told me, it's only when you're alone that you can engage in Deliberate Practice, which he has identified as the key to exceptional achievement. When you practice deliberately, you identify the tasks or knowledge that are just out of your reach, strive to upgrade your performance, monitor your progress, and revise accordingly. Practice sessions that fall short of this standard are not only less useful - they're counterproductive. They reinforce existing cognitive mechanisms instead of improving them.

The public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities.... A fresh mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever it appears they get so angry and bewildered that they always use two stupid expressions--one is that the work of art is grossly unintelligible; the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral. What they mean by these words seems to me to be this. When they say a work is grossly unintelligible, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is new; when they describe a work as grossly immoral, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is true.

I almost cried. But I didn't, because if you're in seventh grade and you cry while wearing a blue floral cape and yellow tights with white feathers on the butt, you just have to curl up and die somewhere in a dark alley.

"In the course of my intellectual life I experienced very acutely the problem of whether it isn't actually presumptuous to say that we can know the truth - in the face of all our limitations. I also asked myself to what extent it might not be better to suppress this category. In pursuing this question, however, I was able to observe and also to grasp that relinquishing truth doesn't solve anything but, on the contrary, leads to the tyranny of caprice. In that case, the only thing that can remain is really what we decide on and can replace at will. Man is degraded if he can't know truth, if everything, in the final analysis, is just the product of an individual or collective decision.

Problem with you Sangsters is you expect perfect. I never did. It just wasn't an option. You start liking boys in third grade? You know you're no Cossack's idea of the perfect son. Eighty percent of everything Dad's ever said to me involves either thermal units or ratchets, so he's not winning Father of the Year, either...But weirdly we're kind of happier than you guys. We're comfortable with the idea that we're screw-ups. Must be awful just figuring that out now.

We degrade God too much, ascribing to him our ideas, in vexation at being unable to understand Him.

"He said focus. The word focus. I hear angels singing. Everything goes dark except for a light that beams down on Sean. It is a God-given sign- like when people see the Virgin Mary in their grilled cheese, except this isn't religious and I'm actually not a big fan of dairy. I stare at the back of his head. His HEAD. Something I see every day but never really see because it's been there forever. Since the first day of third grade.

The sun symbolizes the Divine intelligence; the empty vastness of space symbolizes the Divine All-Possibility and also the Divine immutability; a bird symbolizes the soul; a tree symbolizes the grades of being; and water symbolizes knowledge and rain revelation.