Great Throughts Treasury

"The seeds of the Argument Culture can be found our classrooms, where a teacher will introduce an article or an idea... up debates where people learn not to listen to each other because they're so busy trying to win the debate." - Deborah Tannen, fully Deborah Frances Tannen

"The standards and accountability movement has grown dramatically over the last decade. The No Child Left Behind Act became law, and it has laid bare the problems in many of our poorest, worst-performing schools. We can no longer say that we didn't know that these schools were failing some of our most vulnerable kids. To improve the quality of education, we need to improve instruction in the classroom. Nationwide, two million teachers will leave teaching over the next decade. NYC already loses 30% more math teachers and 22% more science teachers than it certifies every year. IN 2001, I proposed the National Teacher Corps, which brings teachers into the classroom, and a new initiative that would provide more schools with strong principals. Both became law." - Hillary Rodham Clinton

"Love is a better teacher than duty." - Albert Einstein

"THE lessons of fear which the child receives from its parents are intensified by the methods employed at the school in which he receives his education and life-training. We glory in the fact that we have made great strides in the science of education, that we are more practical in the choice of subjects for study, that we have a deeper insight into the soul of the child. And yet, in our method of imparting knowledge and in the relations between teacher and pupil, we can boast of but little progress. We still look upon the child as a more or less unwilling receptacle that must be stuffed with learning. The teacher is still a being to be feared, the school room still a prison house, and learning a punishment. Our system of education is still based on reward and punishment. A high mark is still the encouragement for zeal in study, while the backward student is haunted by the prospect of a low grade. The child, under present methods, prepares his lessons either in order to gain the reward of a high mark, or for fear of the contempt and humiliation that accompanies a low grade. In other words, he works not because of the intrinsic interest of his work but in the hope of reward or in the fear of punishment. The first motive breeds the harmful spirit of competition in the young mind. " - Rabbi Morris Lichtenstein

"Another friend began to say, "Well, Quentin has a problem of adjusting himself to society and he..." This sentence was never finished. The ballet teacher expostulated, "I don't agree. Quentin does exactly as he pleases. The rest of us have to adapt ourselves to him."" - Quentin Crisp, born Denis Charles Pratt

"It is worthwhile too to warn the teacher that undue severity in correcting faults is liable at times to discourage a boy's mind from effort." - Quintilian, fully Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, also Quintillian and Quinctilian NULL

"The point is to develop the childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition and to guide the child over to important fields for society. Such a school demands from the teacher that he be a kind of artist in his province." - Albert Einstein

"Conceptions of Godliness are only possible to grasp through many constrictions. Therefore a person should search very much for a proper teacher who is able to explain things and make these lofty concepts understandable, for this a person needs a tremendously great teacher who is able to explain such lofty concepts on a simple level enabling small-minded people to understand. The smaller a person is and the further away from Hashem he is, the greater teacher he must find, just as the sicker a person is the greater doctor he needs. Much prayer is needed to find a teacher like this, but one must never lose resolve and settle for mediocrity." - Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav or Breslov, aka Reb Nachman Breslover or Nachman from Uman NULL

"Happy the pupil whose teacher approves his words." - Rabbinical Proverbs

"The best preacher is the heart; the best teacher is time; the best book is the world; the best friend is God." - Rabbinical Proverbs

"From a good teacher you may learn the secret of listening. You will never learn the secret of life. You will have to listen for yourself" - Rachel Naomi Remen

"Your best teacher is your last mistake." - Ralph Nader

"We ought to reverence books; to look on them as useful and mighty things. If they are good and true, whether they are about religion, politics, farming, trade, law, or medicine, they are the message of Christ, the maker of all things -- the teacher of all truth." - Charles Kingsley

"Every real teacher is myself in disguise." - Richard Bach, fully Richard David Bach

"There are disciples who, being in chains, visit a teacher who then gives them yet another chain. The disciples, unable to differentiate, are delighted. That is called: A guest looks at another one." - Rinzai, aka Lin- Chi Yi-Sen, Lin-chi I-hsuan, Rinzai Gigen, Venerable Master Lin Chi NULL

"Schools teach you to imitate. If you don't imitate what the teacher wants you get a bad grade. Here, in college, it was more sophisticated, of course; you were supposed to imitate the teacher in such a way as to convince the teacher you were not imitating, but taking the essence of the instruction and going ahead with it on your own. That got you A's. Originality on the other hand could get you anything -- from A to F. The whole grading system cautioned against it." - Robert M. Pirsig

"There are disciples who, being in chains, visit a teacher who then gives them yet another chain. The disciples, unable to differentiate, are delighted. That is called: A guest looks at another one." - Rinzai, aka Lin- Chi Yi-Sen, Lin-chi I-hsuan, Rinzai Gigen, Venerable Master Lin Chi NULL

"There can be no education without leisure; and without leisure, education is worthless." - Sarah J. Hale, fully Sarah Josepha Buell Hale

"Leadership means influencing the organization to face its problems and to live into its opportunities." - Ronald A. Heifetz

"You will best realize the significance of color if we describe how it affects the occultist. For this it is necessary that a person should free himself completely from everything else and devote himself to the particular color, immerse himself in it. If the person devoting himself to the color which covers these physically dense walls were one who had made certain occult progress, it would come about that after a period of this complete devotion the walls would disappear from his clairvoyant vision; the consciousness that the walls shut off the outer world would vanish. Now, what appears first is not merely that he sees the neighboring houses outside, that the walls become like glass, but in the sphere which opens up there is a world of purely spiritual phenomena; spiritual facts and spiritual figures become visible. We need only reflect that behind everything around us physically there are spiritual beings and facts...The worlds which surround us spiritually are of many kinds, many different kinds of elementary beings are around us. These are not enclosed in boxes or in such a state that they live in various houses... But they cannot all be seen in the same way; according to the capacity of clairvoyant vision, there may be visible and invisible beings in the same space. What spiritual beings become visible in any particular instance depends on the color to which we devote ourselves. In a red room, other beings become visible than in a blue room, when one penetrates to them by means of color. We may now ask: what happens if one is not clairvoyant? That which the clairvoyant does consciously is done unconsciously by the etheric body of a person not clairvoyantly trained; it enters a certain relationship with the same beings." - Rudolf Steiner, fully Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner

"The pious mind distinguishes between what is written with reference to the deity and with reference to the flesh, and thus avoids sacrilege." - Saint Ambrose, born Aurelius Ambrosius NULL

"You wish to see; listen. Hearing is a step toward Vision." - Saint Bernard of Clairvaux NULL

"Works and deeds gain passionlessness for the soul . . . and give quietness from thoughts when we acquire silence . . . Otherwise success is not possible. For if a tree is watered every day, can its root wither? Does water ever get less in a vessel if more is added daily? But when a man gains silence, his soul readily discerns passions, and the inner man, roused to spiritual work, overcomes them and, from day to day, lifts the soul nearer to purity." - Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL

"The influence of woman is the same everywhere. Her condition influences the morals, manners, and character of the people of all countries. Where she is debased, society is debased; where she is morally pure and enlightened, society will be proportionately elevated." - Samuel Smiles

"The knowledge and experience which produce wisdom can only become a man's individual possession and property by his own free action; and it is as futile to expect these without laborious, painstaking effort, as it is to hope to gather a harvest where the seed has not been sown." - Samuel Smiles

"The gods do not fight against necessity." - Simonides, aka Simonedes of Ceos NULL

"The pious mind distinguishes between what is written with reference to the deity and with reference to the flesh, and thus avoids sacrilege." - Ambrose, aka Saint Ambrose, fully Aurelius Ambrosius NULL

"You will know that you have this holy gift (of humility) within you and not be led astray when you experience an abundance of unspeakable light together with an indescribable love of prayer." - John Climacus, fully Saint John Climacus, aka John of the Ladder, John Scholasticus and John Sinaites

"As women, however, we need to look very closely at these philosophies and ask ourselves the hard-headed, critical question, “What's in it for me? What does this spiritual system do for women?” Of course, the gurus, teachers, and ascended masters will tell us that, even by asking such a question, we are merely continuing in our enslavement to the Lords of Mind; that it is simply another dodge of the ego as it resists dissolution in the All." - Starhawk, born Miriam Simos NULL

"We live in an essential and unresolvable tension between our unity with nature and our dangerous uniqueness. Systems that attempt to place and make sense of us by focusing exclusively either on the uniqueness or the unity are doomed to failure. But we must not stop asking and questing because the answers are complex and ambiguous." - Stephan Jay Gould

"The lessons we learn in sadness and from loss are those that abide. - Sorrow clarifies the mind, steadies it, forces it to weigh things correctly. - The soil moist with tears best feeds the seeds of truth." - Theodore T. Munger

"All the elements for your happiness are already here. There is no need to run, strive, search, or struggle." - Thich Nhất Hanh

"The lotus flower rises to the level of water greatness of men rise with mental strength." - Thiruvalluvar NULL

"It is especially important in this discussion to recognize the unity of the total process, from that first unimaginable moment of cosmic emergence through all its subsequent forms of expression until the present. This unbreakable bond of relatedness that makes of the whole a universe becomes increasingly apparent to scientific observation, although this bond ultimately escapes scientific formulation or understanding. In virtue of this relatedness, everything is intimately present to everything else in the universe. Nothing is completely itself without everything else. This relatedness is both spatial and temporal. However distant in space or time, the bond of unity is functionally there. The universe is a communion and a community. We ourselves are that communion become conscious of itself." - Thomas Berry

"Nothing is more curious and awkward than the relationship of two people who only know each other with their eyes — who meet and observe each other daily, even hourly and who keep up the impression of disinterest either because of morals or because of a mental abnormality. Between them there is listlessness and pent-up curiosity, the hysteria of an unsatisfied, unnaturally suppressed need for communion and also a kind of tense respect. Because man loves and honors man as long as he is not able to judge him, and desire is a product of lacking knowledge." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

"The best teachers are forceful and demanding. They teach up, not down. They convince us that we are much better and brighter than we thought. " - Thomas Cronin, fully Thomas Edward Cronin

"Decoration - MID the flower-wreathed tombs I stand Bearing lilies in my hand. Comrades! in what soldier-grave Sleeps the bravest of the brave? Is it he who sank to rest 5 With his colors round his breast? Friendship makes his tomb a shrine; Garlands veil it: ask not mine. One low grave, yon trees beneath, Bears no roses, wears no wreath; 10 Yet no heart more high and warm Ever dared the battle-storm, Never gleamed a prouder eye In the front of victory, Never foot had firmer tread 15 On the field where hope lay dead, Then are hid within this tomb, Where the untended grasses bloom, And no stone, with feigned distress, Mocks the sacred loneliness. 20 Youth and beauty, dauntless will, Dreams that life could ne’er fulfil, Here lie buried; here in peace Wrongs and woes have found release. Turning from my comrades’ eyes, 25 Kneeling where a woman lies, I strew lilies on the grave Of the bravest of the brave." - Thomas Wentworth Higginson

"The only test of the reality of a man's religion is his attitude to his fellow men. The only possible proof that a man loves God is the demonstrated fact that he loves his fellow men." - William Barclay

"One leg by truth supported, one by lies, they sidle to the goal with awkward pace, secure of nothing -- but to lose the race." - William Cowper

"History offers some consolation by reminding us that sin has flourished in every age." - Will and Ariel Durant

"Fame often rests at first upon something accidental, and often, too, is swept away, or for a time removed; but neither genius nor glory, is conferred at once, nor do they glimmer and fall, like drops in a grotto, at a shout." - Walter Savage Landor

"Find the appropriate balance of competing claims by various groups of stakeholders. All claims deserve consideration but some claims are more important than others." - Warren Bennis, fully Warren Gamaliel Bennis

"Being unhappy is a habit. Being depressed is a habit. Being lazy is a habit. Being limited is a habit. These, and many other personality traits, result from the way in which you use your mind." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

"Education is essentially the direction of mental energy. Children have abundant energy looking for an outlet. If adult society provides a satisfactory outlet, hobbies develop into professions and adults find life in their work. If adult society fails in providing an outlet, a double disaster occurs. The child has no energy or enthusiasm for work; and the child's energies are left to find an outlet at random. Society has then abdicated its duty to educate." - W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer

"Mathematicians, it is often said, tend to be musical. It is less well known that problems arising from music have played an important role in the discovery of fundamental mathematical ideas. Questions about the vibrations of a piano string led to a fierce controversy that forced mathematicians to clarify their ideas about area, continuity, and the convergence of series." - W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer

"My concern has always been to promote joy in mathematics for all-ability pupils, and the driving force has been a feeling that must be shared by anyone who has derived great pleasure from any subject - intense regret that the subject in question is so often presented in a way that produces dislike, worry and a sense of failure." - W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer

"The main task of any teacher is to make a subject interesting." - W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer

"The practical value of mathematics lies in the fact that a single mathematical truth has a multitude of applications. If children can handle numbers with confidence and enthusiasm, they will be able to apply arithmetic to any situation that later life may bring." - W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer

"We are all of us imprisoned in our habits. The essential of education is to foster correct habits. It is easier for a mentally defective child to develop the rhythm of research than it is for a normally intelligent adult who has been subjected to fifteen years of parrot learning." - W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer

"The three greatest concerns of men are these: to make him who is an enemy a friend, to make righteous him who is wicked, and to make the ignorant learned." - Zoroaster, aka Zarathustra or Zarathushtra Spitama NULL