When I was eight years old I got a dummy for Christmas and started teaching myself. I got books and records and sat in front of the bathroom mirror practising. I did my first show in the third grade and just kept going there was no reason to quit.

War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.

Community colleges need to be upgraded. We got to have training for real jobs. We've got a lot of jobs that are going unfilled because we don't have the technology in the heads of graduating college students to deal with them.

I do home schooling. I went to regular school until fifth grade and then I started doing home schooling which it's completely different. I have a teacher on set with me and I just work with her one-on-one.

Quite honestly I never had a desire to be an actor. I tell people I did not choose acting acting chose me. I never grew up wanting to be an actor. I wanted to play football. In about 9th grade an English teacher told me I had a talent to act. He said I should audition for a performing arts high school so I did on a whim. I got accepted.

My second grade teacher told me I would never graduate high school. That I was going to be a juvenile delinquent.

The Sunday School teacher talked too much in the way our grade school teacher used to when she told us about George Washington. Pleasant pretty stories but not true.

My first acting job happened by accident when I was really young. I was in fifth grade and my teacher saw an ad in the paper and took me to the audition after school and I got the part.

Before I got Doctor Who I went to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. I went back to take the final grade exam which is the grade you have to take before you can take the teacher's diploma.

As a teacher you can see the difference in kids who have parents who were involved. That difference by the time these kids get to the third grade is drastic.

My younger sister had kids before I did and managed to earn a master's degree while raising them as a single parent. Now she's a brilliant second-grade teacher. I'm in awe of her ability to juggle everything and still be a great mother.

In the fourth grade my history teacher gave us a project: Why was the auto industry located in Detroit Michigan? I didn't know I was going to be an economist but I knew I was going to do something that was involved in answering questions like that one because I thought that was a fascinating question.

I'd like to say I was smart enough to finish six grades in five years but I think perhaps the teacher was just glad to get rid of me.

I had a ninth grade teacher who told me I was much smarter and much better than I was allowing myself to be.

I've always liked Saturn. But I also have some sympathy for Pluto because I heard it's been downgraded from a planet and I think it should remain a planet. Once you've given something planetary status it's kind of mean to take it away.

My first attempt at a kiss was in fifth grade but it didn't go so well. Later I used Boyz II Men and Jodeci songs to come on to girls. I had more success.

America's downgrade may serve as a wakeup call for its policymakers. It is an unambiguous and loud signal of the country's eroding economic strength and global standing. It renders urgent the need to regain the initiative through better economic policymaking and more coherent governance.