John Forbes Nash Jr. Quotes

Sadly, children's passion for thinking often ends when they encounter a world that seeks to educate them for conformity and obedience only.

The little boy went first day of school He got some crayons and started to draw He put colors all over the paper For colors was what he saw And the teacher said.. "What you doin' young man?" "I'm paintin' flowers" he said She said... "It's not the time for art young man And anyway flowers are green and red There's a time for everything young man And a way it should be done You've got to show concern for everyone else For you're not the only one.

All kids, I think, are creative, but they get it pounded out of them in school.

The supreme lesson of any education should be to think for yourself and to be yourself; absent this attainment, education creates dangerous, stupefying conformity.

Life is the most versatile thing under the sun; and in the pursuit of life and character the author who works in a groove works in blinkers.

There's a wealth of talent that lies in all of us. All of us, including those who work in schools, must nurture creativity systematically and not kill it unwittingly.

We don't have a lot of space in our imaginations to allow people to expand what they do.

A product is most easily sold when it has an identity. So they wrap you all up and put a label on you. And then that's what you have to be. But what I'm looking for is the opportunity to explore what I can do, probing the limits, learning.

I guess, just being in a group, I had never thought to question my individual artistry.

Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist.

Creativity gives the possibility of some sort of achievement to everyone.

I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays and have things arranged for them that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas.

The 'futures' and 'careers' for which American students now prepare are for the most part intellectual and moral wastelands. This chrome-plated consumers' paradise would have us grow up to be well-behaved children. But an important minority of men and women coming to the front today have shown they will die rather than be standardized, replaceable, and irrelevant.

We grow up thinking that the best answer is in someone else's brain. Much of our education is an elaborate game of 'guess what's in the teacher's head?' What the world really needs to know right now is what kind of dreams and ideas are in your head.

Almost everyone today is brain-damaged by our education which is designed to produce docile automatons.

Competition impedes creativity because you present yourself in a way that's going to been seen by somebody outside of you. You're not very much yourself and it limits you.

I'm not going to throw my imagination away. I refuse to lie down to expectation. If I can just hold out till I'm thirty, I'll be incredible.

Your library is your portrait.

The key to education is the experience of beauty.

I am sure it is one's duty as a teacher to try to show boys that no opinions, no tastes, no emotions are worth much unless they are one's own. I suffered acutely as a boy from the lack of being shown this.

In this perfect world, there are certain imperfections that catch your eye. That's what works for me. I don't concentrate on being perfect, but instead put that effort behind my craft and being true to myself. I don't conform to pressures outside of me. I am confident about myself.

If you want to be an architect of change by raising great kids, God bless. If you want to do it by raising money for your kid's school, great. If you want to build a garden - whatever it is. Women like myself - they're complicated, and they have a lot of different interests and qualities within them.

No, I don't believe in genius. I believe in freedom. I think anyone can do it. Anyone can be like Rembrandt.

Don't just rehash what came before. Find new things to do with it, in your unique voice.

I'd hate it if everyone in the world liked me, my music and what I wore. It'd make it boring, and I wouldn't have anything to work towards. It's not to everyone's taste, but I can only be me.