Imagination is the source of every form of human achievement. And it's the one thing that I believe we are systematically jeopardizing in the way we educate our children and ourselves.

— Ken Robinson

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

— Ken Robinson

Many people go through their whole lives having no real sense of what their talents may be, or if they have any to speak of. Human resources are like natural resources; they’re often buried deep. You have to go looking for them, they’re not just lying around on the surface.

— Ken Robinson

Now the problem with standardized tests is that it's based on the mistake that we can simply scale up the education of children like you would scale up making carburetors. And we can't, because human beings are very different from motorcars, and they have feelings about what they do and motivations in doing it, or not.

— Ken Robinson

Passion is the driver of achievement in all fields. Some people love doing things they don't feel they're good at. That may be because they underestimate their talents or haven't yet put the work in to develop them.

— Ken Robinson

Producing works of art doesn't often count as appropriate intellectual work in an arts department: yet the equivalent in a science department, doing physics or chemistry, does. So why is it that in universities writing about novels is thought to be a higher intellectual calling than writing novels; or rather, if writing novels is not thought to be intellectually valid, why is writing about them?

— Ken Robinson

Revolutions are defined not only by the ideas that drive them but by the scale of their impact.

— Ken Robinson

The answer is not to standardize education, but to personalize and customize it to the needs of each child and community. There is no alternative. There never was.

— Ken Robinson

The arts, sciences, humanities, physical education, languages and math all have equal and central contributions to make to a student's education.

— Ken Robinson

The Element is about discovering your self, and you can't do this if you're trapped in a compulsion to conform. You can't be yourself in a swarm.

— Ken Robinson