We can enhance our intelligences, but I am never going to become Yo-Yo Ma, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, or Pele.

We need to focus on the kind of human beings we want to have and the kind of society in which we want to live.

You learn at your best when you have something you care about and can get pleasure in being engaged in.

A good person is one who follows the Ten Commandments and the golden rule. There is plenty of precedent in history to guide us and we probably evolved to be sensitive to Bible-Golden Rule situations. But the dilemmas faced by a worker - a journalist, an architect, an auditor - or by a citizen (what position to take on stem cell research, whether to run for office, what is the proper balance between taxation and social nets) - are not questions that can be answered by traditional texts or precedents.

An individual understands a concept, skill, theory, or domain of knowledge to the extent that he or she can apply it appropriately in a new situation.

We should spend less time ranking children and more time helping them to identify their natural competencies and gifts and cultivate these. There are hundreds and hundreds of ways to succeed and many, many different abilities that will help you get there.

If you think education is expensive, try estimating the cost of ignorance.