No individual can be in full control of his fate-our strengths come significantly from our history, our experiences largely from the vagaries of chance. But by seizing the opportunity to leverage and frame these experiences, we gain agency over them. And this heightened agency, in turn, places us in a stronger position to deal with future experiences, even as it may alter our own sense of strengths and possibilities.

The wonderful thing about the theater is that it can emphasize BOTH our diversity AND our common humanity. In many ways, the world of Shakespeare (or Aeschylus or Racine) is totally different from our world; and yet any human being can look through the differences in dress and mores and discover our common problems, passions, and potentials.

Hitler didn't travel. Stalin didn't travel. Saddam Hussein never traveled. They didn't want to have their orthodoxy challenged.

In roughly the last century, important experiments have been launched by such charismatic educators as Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, Shinichi Suzuki, John Dewey, and A. S. Neil. These approaches have enjoyed considerable success[...] Yet they have had relatively little impact on the mainstream of education throughout the contemporary world.

The biggest mistake of past centuries in teaching has been to treat all students as if they were variants of the same individual and thus to feel justified in teaching them all the same subjects the same way.

While I’ve worked on many topics and written many books, I have not abandoned my interest in multiple intelligences.

I reject the notion that human beings have a single intelligence, which can be drawn on for the full range of problem solving.