When you meet a head of state, and you say, 'What is your most precious natural resource?' they will not say children at first, and then when you say, 'children,' they will pretty quickly agree with you.
Interpretation
Children are often overlooked as valuable resources, yet they are essential for the future.
This quote emphasizes the importance of children as the most precious natural resource we have. Although leaders may initially not recognize this, it highlights that the future of society depends on nurturing and investing in the younger generations, as they hold the potential to shape tomorrow's world.
In practice
In a speech about education reform, one could say, 'As Nicholas Negroponte observed, when we consider our most precious natural resource, we must recognize the invaluable potential in our children.'
Where do new ideas come from? The answer is simple: differences. While there are many theories of creativity, the only tenet they all share is that creativity comes from unlikely juxtapositions. The best way to maximize differences is to mix ages, cultures, and disciplines.
Access by kids to the Internet should be like kids breathing clean air.
It's hard to propose a $100 laptop for a world community of kids and then not say in the same breath that you're going to depend on the community to make software for it.
I'm not good at selling laptops. I'm good at selling ideas.
Computing is not about computers any more. It is about living. Whatever big problem you can imagine, from world peace to the environment to hunger to poverty, the solution always includes education, ... We need to depend more on peer-to-peer and self-driven learning. The laptop is one important means of doing that.
I've spent my whole life worrying about the human-computer interface, so I don't want to suggest that what we have today is even close to acceptable.
The child is an enigma… He has the highest potentialities, but we do not know what he will be.
Since I began presenting programmes about black history my life has become a constant impromptu focus group. I am stopped in the street by people who want to talk about the histories those documentaries explore.
Children do live in fantasy and reality; they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do.
Extemporaneous speaking should be practised [sic] and cultivated. It is the lawyer's avenue to the public. However able and faithful he may be in other respects, people are slow to bring him business if he cannot make a speech. And yet there is not a more fatal error to young lawyers than relying too much on speech-making. If any one, upon his rare powers of speaking, shall claim an exemption from the drudgery of the law, his case is a failure in advance.
Child psychology and child psychiatry cannot be reformed. They must be abolished.
Libraries really are the gates to the future.
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