265 Quotes by Ken Robinson

Life is not linear, it is organic. We create our lives symbiotically as we explore our talents in relation to the circumstances they help create for us.

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.

Creativity, as I see it, is the process of putting your imagination to work. It’s been defined rather simply as applied imagination. That’s not a bad way to think about it.

Sometimes, of course, your loved ones genuinely think you would be wasting your time and talents doing something of which they disapprove.

Too many feel that what they’re good at isn’t valued by schools. Too many think they’re not good at anything.

The second role of a mentor is encouragement. Mentors lead us to believe that we can achieve something that seemed improbable or impossible to us before we met them. They don’t allow us to succumb to self-doubt for too long, or the notion that our dreams are too large for us. They stand by to remind us of the skills we already possess and what we can achieve if we continue to work hard.

It’s not what happens to us that makes the difference in our lives. What makes the difference is our attitude towards what happens. The idea of luck is a powerful way of illustrating the importance of our basic attitudes in affecting whether or not we find our Element.

A strong will to be yourself is an indomitable force.

The arts, sciences, humanities, physical education, languages and maths all have equal and central contributions to make to a student’s education.