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.

Learning happens in the minds and souls, not in the databases of multiple-choice tests.

A three-year-old is not half a six-year-old.

Typically [professors] live in their heads. … They look upon their body as a form of transport for their heads. It’s a way of getting their head to meetings.

Many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not — because the thing they were good at at school wasn’t valued, or was actually stigmatized.

Human intelligence is richer and more dynamic than we have been led to believe by formal academic education.

The arts especially address the idea of aesthetic experience. An aesthetic experience is one in which your senses are operating at their peak; when you’re present in the current moment; when you’re resonating with the excitement of this thing that you’re experiencing; when you are fully alive.