I've written poetry since I was in the first grade and it wasn't until I was a little bit older that I realized poetry could be put to music and become a song.

Poetry is the language we speak in the most terrifying or ecstatic passages of our lives. But the very word poetry scares people. They think of their grade school teachers reciting 'Hiawatha' and they groan.

When resources are degraded we start competing for them whether it is at the local level in Kenya where we had tribal clashes over land and water or at the global level where we are fighting over water oil and minerals. So one way to promote peace is to promote sustainable management and equitable distribution of resources.

When I was in the first grade I was afraid of the teacher and had a miserable time in the reading circle a difficulty that was overcome by the loving patience of my second grade teacher. Even though I could read I refused to do so.

Music is part of us and either ennobles or degrades our behavior.

Thinking in its lower grades is comparable to paper money and in its higher forms it is a kind of poetry.

In third grade I was taking tap-dance lessons and about six weeks before the recital I wanted to quit. My mom said 'No you're going to stay with it.' Well I did it and I was bad too! But my parents never let their kids walk away from something because it was too hard.

Grades were important in our house. I was reading by two. My mom would sit there and read with me read with me read with me. It was wonderful.

Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to the sex when in fact men are insultingly supporting their own superiority.

It is my sincere hope that hospitals across Indiana and America continue to strive for excellence when it comes to providing medical care. This proposed rule will be harmful to communities who wish to upgrade their medical facilities.

Marriage is a very sacred institution and should not be degraded by allowing every other type of relationship to be made equivalent to it.

I come from Montana and in eastern Montana we have a lot of dirt between light bulbs. It is expensive trying to bring the new technologies to smaller schools to upgrade their technologies to take advantage of distance learning.

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.

I was not good in school. I could never read very fast or very well. I got tested for learning disabilities for dyslexia. Then I got put on Ritalin and Dexedrine. I took those starting in the eighth grade. As soon as they pumped that drug into me it would focus me right in.

What makes a child gifted and talented may not always be good grades in school but a different way of looking at the world and learning.

Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being.

Most of the time I liked school and got good grades. In junior high though I hit a stumbling block with math - I used to come home and cry because of how frustrated I was! But after a few good teachers and a lot of perseverance I ended up loving math and even choosing it as a major when I got to college.

This is a good time to ask apologists for the Islamic regime who degrades Islam? Who imposes stoning forced marriage of underage girls and flogging for not wearing the veil? Do such practices represent Iran's ancient history and culture its ethnic and religious diversity? Its centuries of sensual and subversive poetry?

My father who was from a wealthy family and highly educated a lawyer Yale and Columbia walked out with the benefit of a healthy push from my mother a seventh grade graduate who took a typing course and got a secretarial job as fast as she could.

In any crass political calculation drilling for oil will always win more votes than putting a price on carbon. But if I recall what I was taught in fifth-grade American government class we elect presidents to do more than crass political calculations.

I wasn't in school often enough to really belong to a 'clique ' but my friends all studied hard and got pretty good grades. They were good people with self-respect. I still like to be friends with people I admire something about I really believe that we become like the people we're surrounded by so I choose my friends carefully!

Sixth grade was a big time in my childhood of hoops and friendship and coming up with funny things.

Women are degraded by the propensity to enjoy the present moment and at last despise the freedom which they have not sufficient virtue to struggle to attain.

Mankind: A quality of life upgrade is available to each and every one of you. It should give you a quality of life upgrade which means no drugs no alcohol no fast food - unless of course it's a mallard.