Parker Palmer Quotes

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.

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.

I originally got into this because of a five-year-old's begrudgery of his teacher. Mrs. Lawlor cast me as a tree, and I was disgusted. I was sure I had more to offer than that. It was like, 'OK, if you want me to be set dressing, fine, I'll take it on the chin but I'll show you - I'm going to be a big actor some day.'

Education is what remains when we have forgotten all that we have been taught.

My university teacher and mentor Kenneth Arrow remembers me as a student who asked good questions. Although I had not previously thought of myself in that way, on reflection I think that Arrow was right.

Man is born a tabula rasa; he must learn how to choose the ends that are proper for him and the means that he must adopt to attain them. All this must be done by his reason.

I think, as an artist, the overall goal is to teach and educate no matter what the song is about. Somewhere where a listener can get something out of it, something that can give them help to move forward, help them learn something, analyze something in a different way, or think about something.

One of my favorite teachers is Osho, mainly because he liked to push people's buttons just to get them to think and live outside of their comfort zone.

I wanted to be a teacher because that is all I knew. It was a great course on primary school education, in which I could specialise in music, but I ended up dropping out after I was honest with myself about what I really wanted to do with my life.

When I was at school, one of my teachers had two statements hanging from the board all year: 'Be observant' and 'Be empathetic.'

Growing up, I never imagined my journey would pan out as it has, but the one thing I always knew was that I believed in myself.

I'm a perfectionist and I've always been interested in growing and I think that has given me the mental fortitude to continue.

I started reading seriously after I was in college. I read comic books. I read every 'Power Man' and 'Iron Fist' that ever came out. I had a teacher introduce me to poetry, and that kind of woke me up.

There is no better teacher than life itself.

When I got to 10th grade at Booker T. Washington High, I had a teacher, Miss Geraldine Nesbitt. I think she came from New York. She helped me begin to question things.

If children had teachers for judgment and eloquence just as they have for languages, if their memory was exercised less than their energy or their natural genius, if instead of deadening their vivacity of mind we tried to elevate the free scope and impulse of their souls, what might not result from a fine disposition? As it is, we forget that courage, or love of truth and glory are the virtues that matter most in youth; and our one endeavour is to subdue our children's spirits, in order to teach them that dependence and suppleness are the first laws of success in life.

I suppose what I like about Zen is that the teachers are constantly questioning your insight and challenging it, looking for sloppiness or laziness in it, and ways you can go past that.

One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.

Education is ... the invitation to disentangle oneself, for a time, from the urgencies of the here and now and to listen to the conversation in which human beings forever seek to understand themselves.

The most excellent and divine counsel, the best and most profitable advertisement of all others, but the least practised, is to study and learn how to know ourselves. This is the foundation of wisdom and the highway to whatever is good. . . . God, Nature, the wise, the world, preach man, exhort him both by word and deed to the study of himself.

Education best serves students by helping them be more self-reflective.

Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of the naïve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher's ideals are.

It's important to listen to those around you, and ultimately you have to decide which path you're going to go down.

It can be tempting to blame others for our loss of direction. We get lots of information about life but little education in life from parents, teachers, and other authority figures who should know better from their experience. Information is about facts. Education is about wisdom and the knowledge of how to love and survive.

It is the business of the teacher ... to fortify reason and to make conscience sovereign.