Quotes from Parker Palmer

A scholar is committed to building on knowledge that others have gathered, correcting it, confirming it, enlarging it.

When we so fear the dark that we demand light around the clock, there can be only one result: artificial light that is glaring and graceless and, beyond its borders, a darkness that grows ever more terrifying as we try to hold it off.

If we are unfaithful to true self, we will extract a price from others. We will make promises we cannot keep, build houses from flimsy stuff, conjure dreams that devolve into nightmares, and other people will suffer - if we are unfaithful to true self.

We are born with a seed of selfhood that contains the spiritual DNA of our uniqueness-an encoded birthright knowledge of who we are, why we are here, and how we are related to others. We may abandon that knowledge as the years go by, but it never abandons us.

There is no guarantee that starting a small conversation will lead to something larger. But the failure to take any step at all, no matter how small, comes with an ironclad guarantee that we will not be part of helping change happen.

From first days in school, we are taught to listen to everything and everyone but ourselves, to take in all our clues about living from the people and powers around us.

They should be encouraged to bring all of who they are and what they know into each class. By welcoming the whole student into our classes, unfamiliar aspects of who they are and what they care about suddenly come into view. What are the heartfelt questions they struggle with? Are they too scared to acknowledge the hopes and aspirations they harbor for their lives and for this world?

Experience alone opens a door, but intellectual framing and reflection are required if meaning is to be made of the experience.

Educate our students as whole people, and they will bring all of who they are to the demands of being human in private and public life. The present and future well being of humankind asks nothing less of us.