Ken Robinson Quotes

Think your own thoughts.

I've never been resigned to ready-made ideas as I was to ready-made clothes, perhaps because although I couldn't sew, I could think.

Students must have initiative; they should not be mere imitators. They must learn to think and act for themselves - and be free.

I just like doing things from my own head.

It's a question of not copying the masters, to look for something, good or bad, for oneself. To enter this liberated state of mind, one cannot copy the others.

The creative individual has the capacity to free himself from the web of social pressures in which the rest of us are caught. He is capable of questioning the assumptions that the rest of us accept.

I don't believe in other people's ideas. I have my own ideas.

Imitation has to be avoided. Understanding should be the only law, never imitation.

You may derive thoughts from others; your way of thinking, the mould in which your thoughts are cast, must be your own.

I think the enemy of creativity in the world today is that so much thinking is done for you.

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.

I'm not following anybody's tracks, I'm making my own baby.

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

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.

I was always a rebel in the sense that I always wanted to go my own road and do something that nobody else has done.

I never liked to copy things that are out there. I always like to come up with something new, something different.

I think I became my own stylist by not knowing any better.

Don't look at all at what other people are doing. Think of what you're doing as completely fresh because if you imitate you're dead.

I never follow anybody's path, what they've done.

The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done.

My early experiences in animation taught me that following someone else is not a great idea.

I'm used to being told what to say, but not what to think... that's usually left up to me.

You've got to be able to think on your own; you've got to be creative. You can't be willing to take a backseat.

I've never tried to be accepted. When everyone is doing one thing, I've always had the instinct to go the other way. I don't understand how an individual with their own mind, their own values, and their own beliefs can be so willing to just follow what everybody else is doing. How can you make history doing what everybody else is doing?

I think I always had, like, a rebellious spirit. But it wasn't a rebellious spirit to do wrong. It was a rebellious spirit to do something different.