In my travels all over the world, I have come to realize that what distinguishes one child from another is not ability, but access. Access to education, access to opportunity, access to love.

Without education, your children can never really meet the challenges they will face. So it's very important to give children education and explain that they should play a role for their country.

Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become head of the mine, that a child of farmworkers can become the president of a great nation.

Teachers need our active support and encouragement. They are doing one of the most necessary and exacting jobs in the land. They are developing our most precious national resource: our children, our future citizens.

It is not beyond our power to create a world in which all children have access to a good education. Those who do not believe this have small imaginations.

It reaffirmed my long-held belief that education was the enemy of prejudice. These were men and women of science, and science had no room for racism.