Pell Grants are and have been critically important tools in making higher education a possibility for lower- and middle-income students.

In Philadelphia our public safety poverty reduction health and economic development all start with education. We can't grow the middle class if we don't give our kids the tools they need to innovate and invent.

The College Access and Opportunity Act addresses the important need to make higher education more affordable and easier to access for low and middle-income students.

My father was an autodidact. It wasn't a middle-class house. Shopkeepers are aspirant. He paid for me to go to private school. He was denied an education - he had a horrible childhood. He got a place at a grammar school and wasn't allowed to go.

I'm sure everything has a bearing on what I'm doing. My family is a lower-middle-class family there's lots of children seven brothers two sisters grew up together fighting with each other went to school. My mother went to school up to 4th grade. My father went to school up to 8th grade. So that's about the education level we had in the family.

A person like myself born and raised in the inner city of Atlanta Georgia to lower-middle-class parents. But I had the opportunity to get an education to go and earn a commission in the United States Army to serve for 22 years to lead men and women in combat.

Abraham Lincoln comes from nothing has no education no money lives in the middle of nowhere on the frontier. And despite the fact that he suffers one tragedy and one setback after another through sheer force of will he becomes something extraordinary: not only the president but the person who almost single-handedly united the country.

Well we lost a lot of our independence already. We are dependent on China for credit. We are dependent on Middle Eastern countries for energy supplies. And many Americans are dependent on the government for their income health care education of their children food stamps.

You can choose a future where more Americans have the chance to gain the skills they need to compete no matter how old they are or how much money they have. Education was the gateway to opportunity for me. It was the gateway for Michelle. And now more than ever it is the gateway to a middle-class life.

The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.

Sex keeps me in shape. I don't diet I eat what I like. I love Mars bars and I smoke and drink. But I love running off in the middle of the day to make love. It really burns up calories.

Sometimes you start with the drawing and then the gag comes to you in the middle of it. That is when you start working on the solution of the gag which is composition placing equilibrium and character design.

When nearly a third of our high school students do not graduate on time with their peers we have work to do. We must design our middle and high schools so that no student gets lost in the crowd and disconnected from his or her own potential.

When theater becomes a soothing middle-class thing when it's packaged as the Night Out then that's the death of it.

I grew up between the two world wars and received a rather solid general education the kind middle class children enjoyed in a country whose educational system had its roots dating back to the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.

The last thing I want my child to see is Dad running around in the middle of the pack. That would really upset me. And that would upset him. I would be embarrassed to take him to school with kids saying 'Hey how'd your dad do this weekend?' 'Well he finished fifth or sixth'.

My first memory of the Rolling Stones is listening to 'Satisfaction' at a sixth-grade slumber party at a friend's house in Ankara Turkey where my family was living at the time. In the middle of our sleepover my friend's dad stopped the record when he heard the words 'girlie action!'

In the 'Garnethill' trilogy people always forget that Maureen O'Donnell's dad was a journalist and she did art history at uni and her brother did law but no-one ever thinks they're middle-class - they're just working class because they speak with accents.

My dad dragged me to a Bruce Springsteen concert as a kid. It was my first concert but I fell asleep in the middle. My second concert was Weezer on the 'Pinkerton' tour and 'Pinkerton' is the reason why I'm doing this.

My parents were kind of over protective people. Me and my sister had to play in the backyard all the time. They bought us bikes for Christmas but wouldn't let us ride in the street we had to ride in the backyard. Another Christmas my dad got me a basketball hoop and put it in the middle of the lawn! You can't dribble on grass.

Barack Obama knows that to create an economy built to last we need to focus on middle-class families. Families who stay up on Sunday nights pacing the floor like my dad did while their children tucked in bed dream big dreams. Families who aren't sure what Monday morning will bring but who believe our nation's best days are still ahead.

What is a normal childhood? We weren't rich we were pretty middle-class. My dad survived from job to job with him taking care of so many relatives he couldn't save any money.

I've decided to run for the U.S. Senate because I believe Wisconsin families need a senator who will work hard to deliver results for the middle class - a leader with the courage to do what's right no matter how tough the odds or how powerful the special interests we have to fight.

Film and television are just different. Film is cool because it's a complete package. You know the beginning middle and end. You can plan it out more which I like. But with television you get a new script every week so it's constantly a mystery as to what you're going to be doing.