The gardener does not make a plant grow. The job of a gardener is to create optimal conditions.

Our task is to educate their (our students) whole being so they can face the future. We may not see the future, but they will and our job is to help them make something of it.

The role of a creative leader is not to have all the ideas; it's to create a culture where everyone can have ideas and feel that they're valued.

The real role of leadership in education ... is not and should not be command and control. The real role of leadership is climate control, creating a climate of possibility.

The dropout crisis is just the tip of an iceberg. What it doesn't count are all the kids who are in school but being disengaged from it, who don't enjoy it, who don't get any real benefit from it.

Up to a point you welcome being interrupted because it is only by interacting with other people that you get anything interesting done.

Creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.

What you do for yourself dies with you when you leave this world, what you do for others lives on forever.

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.

The first task in teaching for creativity in any field is to encourage people to believe in their creative potential and to nurture the confidence to try.

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.

I think that when in doubt about the truth of an issue, it's safer and in better taste to select the least numerous of the adversaries.

In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.

What's important is finding out what works for you.

Photography is a weapon against what's wrong out there. It's bearing witness to the truth.

Nature does not demand that we be perfect. It requires only that we grow.

When I was working on Big Fan, I didnt really feel like any lines needed to be changed or enhanced or expanded upon in any way. I thought it was a solid script. All you had to do was what it said.

Cal: “Could you write a little bigger? I’m not sure China saw that.” Every Boy's Got One

And shooting things in a documentary style was a good way to create tension and energy without money.

Happiness is not a sign that we are right with God; happiness is a sign of satisfaction, that is all, and the majority of us can be satisfied on too low a level.

At the top of the iron staircase leading to the stage, the good, dry, dusty warmth wraps me round like a comfortable dirty cloak.