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Parker J. Palmer Quotes

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Parker J. Palmer is an American author and educator renowned for his works in the fields of personal and community wisdom, emphasizing how education can promote the wholeness of individuals and societies.

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All People Teacher World Teaching Humans Ifs Self Community Knows Needs Want Students Teach Heart Way Doe Integrity Thinking Giving Identity

Famous Parker J. Palmer Quotes

“The answer comes to me through studying the lives of the Rosa Parks and the Vaclav Havels and the Nelson Mandelas and the Dorothy Days of this world. These are people who have come to understand that no punishment that anybody could lay on us could possibly be worse than the punishment we lay on ourselves by conspiring in our own diminishment, by living a divided life, by failing to make that fundamental decision to act and speak on the outside in ways consonant with what we know to be true on the inside.”

People Knows World Way Speak Decision Answers Study Failing This World Fundamentals Lays Punishment Being True Parks Divided Nelson Rosa Conspiring Consonants

Author:Parker J. Palmer

“Technology is incredibly creative and has great potentials; but it is also very seductive in the way it isolates people, in the way it jazzes people up, in the way it makes junkies out of us - junkies who need a constant stimulation, more information, more bells and whistles, more electronic wonders in order not to be bored.”

People Way Needs Order Wonder Technology Creative Information Constant Bored Bells Seductive Junkie Stimulation

Author:Parker J. Palmer

“Even though kids may have planned for months for the trip to Disneyland, some may be feeling very homesick, very forlorn, or very marginalized by the group. Your capacity to perceive those kinds of situations and respond to them in a pastoral way is the stuff you are teaching. And even though the kids may appear to be ignoring you, they are very aware of what you are doing and how you are doing it. They are also very aware of what you are missing and not picking up on.”

Way Kind May Feelings Kids Stuff Situation Groups Teaching Missing Months Capacity Perceive Disneyland Marginalized Homesick Forlorn Ignoring You

Author:Parker J. Palmer

“We must come together in ways that respect the solitude of the soul that avoid the unconscious violence we do when we try to save each other that evoke our capacity to hold another life without dishonoring its mystery never trying to coerce the other into meeting our own needs.”

Way Needs Trying Soul Together Violence Mystery Solitude Capacity Meetings Unconscious Evoke Another Life Coerce

Book:Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

Source: Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

“As I teach, I project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject, and our way of being together.”

Way Soul Together Teach Conditions Subjects Students Projects My Soul Being Together

Book:The Courage to Teach Guide for Reflection and Renewal

Source: The Courage to Teach Guide for Reflection and Renewal

“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.”

Source: The Courage to Teach Guide for Reflection and Renewal

“Integrity requires that I discern what is integral to my selfhood, what fits and what does not-and that I choose life-giving ways of relating to the forces that converge within me: Do I welcome them or fear them, embrace them or reject them, move with them or against them? By choosing integrity, I become more whole, but wholeness does not mean perfection. It means becoming more real by acknowledging the whole of who I am.”

Source: The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life

“Let’s not forget that American democracy started with ‘We the People’ agreeing to work hard to create ‘a more perfect union.’ We’ve lost the idea that politics begins at home with what happens in families, in neighborhoods, in classrooms, in congregations. We called this democracy into being – and if we want to call this democracy back to its highest values, it’s got to be the us doing that calling. That’s not going to happen if ‘We the People’ don’t know how to talk to one another with civility and hold our differences in a creative, life-giving way.”

“When we generate utopian visions and hope to make them happen soon – when we elect Barack Obama and expect all our problems to be solved, and solved quickly, by his presidency – the outcome is both predictable and tragic. That is not the way to engage social change in a democracy. And it is not the way to help democracy itself survive and thrive. Democracy is a non-stop experiment. Each generation must help sustain it, which means being in it day-by-day for the long haul.”

Way Mean Long Helping Problem Happens Social Vision Democracy Generations Experiments Barack Outcomes Thrive Tragic Presidency Social Change Predictable Utopian Haul Long Haul Non Stop

Author:Parker J. Palmer

“Fear is so fundamental to the human condition that all the great spiritual traditions originate in an effort to overcome its effects on our lives. With different words, they all proclaim the same core message: "Be not afraid." Though the traditions vary widely in the ways they propose to take us beyond fear, all hold out the same hope: we can escape fear's paralysis and enter a state of grace where encounters with otherness will not threaten us but will enrich our work and our lives.”

Source: The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life

“There's often a distressing disconnect between the good words we speak and the way we live our lives. In personal relations and politics, the mass media, the academy and organized religion, our good words tend to float away even as they leave our lips, ascending to an altitude where they neither reflect nor connect with the human condition. We long for words like love, truth, and justice to become flesh and dwell among us. But in our violent world, it's risky business to wrap our frail flesh around words like those, and we don't like the odds.”