You cannot predict the outcome of human development. All you can do is like a farmer create the conditions under which it will begin to flourish.

Imagination is the primary gift of human consciousness.

Teaching is a creative profession, not a delivery system. Great teachers do [pass on information], but what great teachers also do is mentor, stimulate, provoke, engage.

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.

Children are wonderfully confident in their own imaginations. Most of us lose this confidence as we grow up.

The fact is that given the challenges we face, education doesn't need to be reformed -- it needs to be transformed. The key to this transformation is not to standardize education, but to personalize it, to build achievement on discovering the individual talents of each child, to put students in an environment where they want to learn and where they can naturally discover their true passions.

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.