This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
John Holt, fully John Caldwell Holt
The most important thing any teacher has to learn, not to be learned in any school of education I ever heard of, can be expressed in seven words: Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners.
John Steinbeck, fully John Ernst Steinbeck
I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.
John Wooden, fully John Robert Wooden
I believe it’s impossible to claim you have taught, when there are students who have not learned. With that commitment, from my first year as an English teacher until my last as UCLA basketball teacher/coach, I was determined to make the effort to become the best teacher I could possibly be, not for my sake, but for all those who were placed under my supervision.
By preventing a free market in education, a handful of social engineers - backed by the industries that profit from compulsory schooling: teacher colleges, textbook publishers, materials suppliers, et al. - has ensured that most of our children will not have an education, even though they may be thoroughly schooled.
Among the sentiments of most powerful operation upon the human heart, and most highly honorable to the human character, are those of veneration for our forefathers, and of love for our posterity. They form the connecting links between the selfish and the social passions. By the fundamental principle of Christianity, the happiness of the individual is Later-woven, by innumerable and imperceptible ties, with that of his contemporaries: by the power of filial reverence and parental affection, individual existence is extended beyond the limits of individual life, and the happiness of every age is chained in mutual dependence upon that of every other.
Age | Dependence | Existence | Individual | Love | Power | Reverence | Happiness |
In the struggle to establish an adequate world government, the teacher can do much to prepare the hearts and minds of children for global understanding and cooperation. At the very heart of all the agencies which will assure the coming of world government must stand the school, the teacher, and the organized profession.
Children | Global | Government | Heart | Struggle | Understanding | Will | World | Government | Teacher |
Karl Menninger, fully Karl Augustus Menninger
What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches.
Ken Wilber, fully Kenneth Earl Wilber II
There are four major stages of spiritual unfolding: belief, faith, direct experience, and permanent adaptation: you can believe in Spirit, you can have faith in Spirit, you can directly experience Spirit, you can become Spirit… Meditation is not primarily uncovering the repressed unconscious, but allowing the emergence of higher domains--which usually leaves the lower, repressed domains still lower, and still repressed… Well, the point, of course, is to take up integral practice as the only sound and balanced way to proceed…If you are interested in genuine transformative spirituality, find an authentic spiritual teacher and begin practice. Without practice, you will never move beyond the phases of belief, faith, and random peak experiences. You will never evolve into plateau experiences, nor from there into permanent adaptation. You will remain, at best, a brief visitor in the territory of your own higher estate, a tourist of you own true Self.
Experience | Faith | Meditation | Practice | Sound | Will | Teacher |
The American cultural ideal of the self-made man, of everyone standing on his own feet, is as tragic a picture as the initiative – destroying dependence on a benevolent despot. We all need each other. This type of interdependence is the greatest challenge to the maturity of individual and group functioning.
Challenge | Dependence | Individual | Initiative | Need |
Lily Tomlin, fully Mary Jean "Lily" Tomlin
I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.
Mel Levine, formally Melvin D Levine
In general, kids have very little tolerance for humiliation or failure. One of a student's most important goals is to make it through the day without embarrassment. Imagine then, the frustration of children with differences in learning, who are at risk of growing up deprived of experiencing success. Naturally, they compare themselves to their peers and siblings. While some may see themselves as "different," many will feel inferior. Unfortunately, these feelings are likely to endure. When they do, serious complications can develop including plummeting self- esteem, behavior problems, excessive dependence on peers, alienation from family, deep anxiety, and a loss of motivation. The sad reality is that a difference in learning, not addressed as such, can lead to anti-social behavior, substance abuse, dropping out, and other serious forms of maladjustment.
Alienation | Behavior | Children | Day | Dependence | Feelings | Goals | Important | Little | Reality | Risk | Will | Loss |
Mel Levine, formally Melvin D Levine
Too many kids struggle and fail needlessly simply because the way in which they learn is incompatible with the way they’re being taught. Schools are filled with kids who give up on themselves, are convinced they’re "losers", and conclude they’re just dumb. It’s tragic. It’s also painful—painful for the student, teacher and parent who may be unaware that the "wiring" of that child’s brain simply is not in synch with the demands and expectations of the situations at hand.
Lucretia Mott, fully Lucretia Coffin Mott
In the true married relationship, the independence of husband and wife will be equal, their dependence mutual, and their obligations reciprocal.
Dependence | Husband | Wife | Will |
Louis L'Amour, fully Louis Dearborn L'Amour
Actually, all education is self-education. A teacher is only a guide, to point out the way, and no school, no matter how excellent, can give you education. What you receive is like the outlines in a child’s coloring book. You must fill in the colors yourself.
I have learned from Nature that dependence on unnatural beliefs weakens us in the struggle and shortens our breath for the race.
Dependence | Nature | Struggle |
Maria Von Ebner-Eschenbach, or Marie von Ebner-Eschenbachová, Marie Freifrau von Ebner-Eschenbach
Pain is the great teacher of mankind. Beneath its breath souls develop.
Teacher |
A good teacher must know the rules; a good pupil, the exceptions.