Parker Palmer Quotes

The world is a mirror for us – whatever you say about others is really how you feel about yourself.

It would require constant vigilance to not replace each person with my own fictional version of them.

Poor communication doesn’t disconnect souls. It’s the disconnected souls who poorly communicate.

We are never so much disposed to quarrel with others as when we are dissatisfied with ourselves.

The only way is to teach with love, which requires looking beyond what seems, and remembering we create with our judgements.

I'm really loving and open at the same time.

Feeling irritated, restless, afraid, and hopeless is a reminder to listen more carefully.

To know each other we must reach beyond the sphere of our sense perceptions.

You're giving up. You're slipping into being miserable and if you are being miserable, then it's all about you again. But it's not all about you. Love doesn't work that way.

The power of getting to know one another is so immense, eclipsed only by first getting to know ourselves.

Every time we focus on someone else's darkness, we are blocking our own view of the light. We think the person we are involved with has attacked us or has withheld love from us, when they really haven't. We focus on their guilt instead of their innocence. Frequently people are just being themselves and we start projecting our own childhood dramas onto them, pushing away the very love we want so much.

I certainly know I have been blessed with much more empathy than I ever knew I would feel for other people.

Non-reaction to the ego in others is one of the most effective ways not only of going beyond ego in yourself but also of dissolving the collective human ego.

It's in understanding yourself deeply that you can lend yourself to another person's circumstances and another person's experience.

The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes.

Teaching, like any truly human activity, emerges from one's inwardness, for better or worse. As I teach I project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject, and our way of being together. The entanglements I experience in the classroom are often no more or less than the convolutions of my inner life. Viewed from this angle, teaching holds a mirror to the soul. If I am willing to look in that mirror and not run from what I see, I have a chance to gain self-knowledge-and knowing myself is as crucial to good teaching as knowing my students and my subject.

We transform our relationships when we listen with our ears, hearts, and souls.

Empathy is cloaked in our actions - as in, we might be experiencing empathy but not realize it's empathy.

Sorry I’m so sarcastic. I feel really bad about it.

How can you say something's important if you don't first withdraw and feel how rich you've become? That way you can become really generous. Otherwise, what do you give?

It is necessary to remember, as we think critically about domination, that we all have the capacity to act in ways that oppress, dominate, wound (whether or not that power is institutionalized). It is necessary to remember that it is first the potential oppressor within that we must resist – the potential victim within that we must rescue – otherwise we cannot hope for an end to domination, for liberation.

It's rare to find a consistently creative or insightful person who is also an angry person. They can't occupy the same space, and if your anger moves in, generosity and creativity often move out. It's difficult to use revenge or animus to fuel great work.

What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches.

Learning from one's enemies is the best way to love them, for it puts one into a grateful mood toward them.

Make your mind learn its way around the heart.