Personal relationships are the fertile soil from which all advancement, all success, all achievement in real life grows.

I mean, one thing I know about change is we are not going to close the achievement gap without educators.

I do think we know that a teacher who knows what he or she is doing, knows their subject matter, and knows how to impart knowledge to kids is a critical piece of closing the achievement gap.

We want to obviously foster a relationship that we're a partner with states; that we all share the same goals of closing the achievement gap, just as the Congress does; and that we're practical and sophisticated enough to understand what they're talking about.

With my academic achievement in high school I was accepted rather readily at Princeton and equally as fast at Yale, but my test scores were not comparable to that of my classmates. And that's been shown by statistics, there are reasons for that - there are cultural biases built into testing, and that was one of the motivations for the concept of affirmative action to try to balance out those effects.

My greatest achievement so far is that I've been able to continue with my normal life. I love what I do, but more so, I'm glad to have people who care about me close by.

This homage has been rendered not to me - for the Polish soil is fertile and does not lack better writers than me - but to the Polish achievement, the Polish genius.

Emmys are wonderful and I'm thrilled to death that I have mine. But they're representative of a specific achievement, where this sort of thing is representative of how you've grown in your own industry.

Every great work, every big accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and often just before the big achievement, comes apparent failure and discouragement.

On the basis of biological, sociological, and historical knowledge, we should recognize that the individual self is subject to death or decay, but the sum total of individual achievement, for better or worse, lives on in the immortality of The Larger.

As we talk about the need to foster academic achievement, we must recognize and reward those who strive academically, just as we honor athletic champions. Meeting the President of the United States is just the honor we should bestow on our academic champions.

I think the sense of family and family achievement, plus the discipline which I received there from that one-room school were really very helpful in what I did later on.

Spectacular achievement is always preceded by unspectacular preparation.

Not only will this make you treat each moment more preciously, but you will be more patient with yourself and with others, recognizing that there are millions of moments on the path to any worthwhile achievement.

The United States is a giant island of freedom, achievement, wealth and prosperity in a world hostile to our values.