Catherine the Great

Men make love more intensely at 20, but make love better, however, at 30.

One does not always do the best there is. One does the best one can. – Catherine the Great

I am one of the people who love the why of things.

You philosophers are lucky men. You write on paper and paper is patient. Unfortunate Empress that I am, I write on the susceptible skins of living beings.

In my position you have to read when you want to write and to talk when you would like to read.

Experience shows that the frequent use of severe punishment has never rendered a people better. The death of a criminal is a less effective means of restraining crimes than the permanent example of a man deprived of his liberty during the whole of his life to make amends for the injury he has done to the public.

We are now embarked on another venture to put the American dream to work in meeting the new demands of a new day. Once again we must start where men would improve their society have always known they must begin – with an educational system restudied, reinforced, and revitalized.

I came in early every day for six months till I intercepted the letter from UCLA saying they’d never heard of me. I replaced it with a letter that said I’d graduated.

I call myself a teacher because they want me to call myself a teacher, but actually, what I’m doing is I’m studying.

In the schoolroom her quick mind had taken readily that strong starch of unexplained rules and disconnected facts which saves ignorance from any painful sense of limpness.

There was no word dyslexia when I was a kid. You were just dumb.

I never cut class. I loved getting A’s, I liked being smart. I liked being on time. I thought being smart is cooler than anything in the world.

I don’t give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.

[On his donation of $100 million to UCLA in 2012 adding to the $200 million he donated in 2002] The cost of a world-class medical education should not deter our future innovators, doctors and scientists from the path they hope to pursue. We need the students at this world-class institution to be driven by determination and the desire to do their best work and not by the fear of crushing debt. I hope in doing this that others will be inspired to do the same.

I would like to be a scholar in whatever I do, a scholar is never finished, he is always seeking and I am always seeking.

Education is the best provision for old age.

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him.

Let us not think of education only in terms of its costs, but rather in terms of the infinite potential of the human mind that can be realized through education. Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation.

Education can’t focus only on developing our wonderful brain. We also need warm-heartedness. This is my view.

One of the things that make community colleges so special is they do not pick and choose their students – they work with all students.

I would love to learn other languages, maybe French? My uncle speaks German so maybe also German? Chinese seems to be too difficult.