Nicholas Negroponte Children Quotations

Every child in Uruguay has a little green laptop.

Most children in the world go to schools in two shifts, there's a morning shift and an afternoon shift.

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.

When we go to school, very often, we don't see that passion because the way school is run, the disciplinary nature of it and the rote learning are so, sort of, offensive actually, that children sort of lose that passion more often than not.

In Uruguay, the President of the country announced that this would be his legacy, "One laptop per child."

The wild, the absurd, the seemingly crazy: this kind of thinking is where new ideas come from ... The people capable of such playful thought carry forward their childish qualities and childhood dreams, applying them in areas where most of us get stuck, victims of our adult seriousness. Staying a child isn't easy.

There is a belief that children drop out of school because they're needed by their families to work, or the little girls are needed to take care of younger siblings. It turns out that's not really true.

Children are the greatest natural resource of any country, and educating these children is at the root of solving our largest and most complex problems. Yet the best education may not come from sitting in a traditional classroom, but rather through independent interaction and exploration. The development of a $100 laptop will now make this possible for all kids -- especially those in developing nations.

This selected group of organizations has shown their commitment and leadership in closing the digital divide in emerging countries, focusing on providing access to life-altering technology and information to children across the globe.

So when we make this available, it is an education project, not a laptop project. The digital divide is a learning divide - digital is the means through which children learn leaning. This is, we believe, the way to do it.