Learning power comprises both literacy and numeracy, and is ultimately more fundamental than either of them.

Parents and educators need to establish a culture in which security and clarity of expectations are balanced with the encouragement of playfulness, inquisitiveness and self reliance.

People see their own lives as stories; a lifelong story with a single hero or heroine... much contemporary unhappiness is due to the fact that people in high tech societies receive neither strong myths and stories from their culture nor the ability to construct their own... they lose the plot.

Creativity may have killed a few cats, but evolution certainly eliminated many more incurious ones.

Learning power comprises both literacy and numeracy, and is ultimately more fundamental than either of them.

Less-creative people can't shift gears. Very creative people move between these two states intuitively.

Underneath the visible problems with reading and writing lies the deeper problem of 'illearnacy': an acquired disabling of learning courage and learning initiative.