Ken Robinson

“Death Valley wasn't dead at all. It was asleep. It was simply waiting for the conditions of growth. When the conditions came, life returned to the heart of Death Valley.Human beings and human communities are the same. We need the right conditions for growth, in our schools, businesses, and communities, and in our individual lives. If the conditions are right, people grown in synergy with the people around them and the environments they create. If the conditions are poor, people protect themselves and their anxieties from neighbors and the world. Some of the elements of our growth are inside us. They include the need to develop our unique natural aptitudes and personal passions. Finding and nurturing them is the surest way to ensure our growth and fulfillment a as individuals.”

“Producing works of art doesn't often count as appropriate intellectual work in an arts department: yet the equivalent in a science department, doing physics or chemistry, does. So why is it that in universities writing about novels is thought to be a higher intellectual calling than writing novels; or rather, if writing novels is not thought to be intellectually valid, why is writing about them?”

“You create your life, and you can recreate it, too. In times of economic downturn and uncertainty, it's more important than ever to look deep inside yourself to fathom the sort of life you really want to lead and the talents and passions that can make that possible.”

“Whether or not you discover your talents and passions is partly a matter of opportunity. If you've never been sailing, or picked up an instrument, or tried to teach or to write fiction, how would you know if you had a talent for these things?”

“Revolutions are defined not only by the ideas that drive them but by the scale of their impact.”

“Learning happens in the minds and souls, not in the databases of multiple-choice tests.”

“Creativity is as important now in education as literacy and we should treat it with the same status.”

“What you're doing now, or have done in the past, need not determine what you can do next and in the future.”

“School systems should base their curriculum not on the idea of separate subjects, but on the much more fertile idea of disciplines... which makes possible a fluid and dynamic curriculum that is interdisciplinary.”

“Very often, organizations are inflexible because there is too little communication between functions; they are too segregated.”

“Passion is the driver of achievement in all fields. Some people love doing things they don't feel they're good at. That may be because they underestimate their talents or haven't yet put the work in to develop them.”

“Farmers base their livelihoods on raising crops. But farmers do not make plants grow. They don't attach the roots, glue on the petals, or color the fruit. The plant grows itself. Farmers and gardeners provide the conditions for growth. Good farmers know what those conditions are, and bad ones don't.”

“Now the problem with standardized tests is that it's based on the mistake that we can simply scale up the education of children like you would scale up making carburetors. And we can't, because human beings are very different from motorcars, and they have feelings about what they do and motivations in doing it, or not.”

“Whatever your aptitudes, the greatest source of achievement is passion. Aptitude matters, but passion often matters more… If you love doing something, you’ll be constantly drawn to get better at it.”

“Curiosity is the engine of achievement.”

“Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler did not solve an old problem, they asked a new question, and in doing so they changed the whole basis on which the old questions had been framed.”

“Creativity is putting your imagination to work, and it's produced the most extraordinary results in human culture.”

“The gardener does not make a plant grow. The job of a gardener is to create optimal conditions.”

“If you're running an engineering or finance company, all companies depend on ideas and ingenuity. I think the principles of creative leadership apply everywhere, whether it's an advertising company or whether you're running a hospital.”

“The answer is not to standardize education, but to personalize and customize it to the needs of each child and community. There is no alternative. There never was.”