I was very lucky to be born into a very academic family. I was well-read, well-trained in mathematics. I had lots of advantages to start with.
Even Milton Friedman - doyen of radical free market thought - was willing to consider some government intervention into primary education on the grounds that it is unfair for children to not get a chance in life because they were born to poor parents.
I was born in Evanston, Illinois. I spent my elementary and part of my junior high school years in a D.C. suburb. And then I spent my high school years in Minnesota. And then I spent my college years in Colorado. And then I spent some time living in China. And then I spent three years in Vermont before moving down to Nashville.
All the evidence that we have indicates that it is reasonable to assume in practically every human being, and certainly in almost every newborn baby, that there is an active will toward health, an impulse towards growth, or towards the actualization.
I'm a born athlete. Weight-lifting is in my blood. I used to do the powerlifting thing. I gained a little weight, but I still got it; I'm mad built.
My parents were Zionists born in Poland. My father was a rabbi who didn't know much about science and ran a grocery store in the neighborhood with my mother's help.
I was born in Jerusalem with a religious background and a rabbi as a father... it was rather poor, but what we did have, we did have books.
I was born in Jerusalem in 1939 to a poor family that shared a rented four-room apartment with two additional families and their children.
My journey began with a single pencil. While traveling through India in 2006, I asked a boy begging on the streets, 'If you could have anything in the world, what would you want?' and he answered me with two words: 'A pencil.' Luckily, I had one in my pocket, and in the second it took me to give it to him, a defining dream was born.
The idea of elegance and aristocratic indulgence of an ocean cruise was born out of the image of the rich men and women who ruled the British Empire slowly sailing to India and the Far East while sipping gin and tonic on deck - served by men in white jackets.
