I never teach until I've spoken to the fighter. I have to first determine his emotional state, get his background, to find out what I have to do, how many layers I have to keep peeling off so that I get to the core of the person so that he can recognize, as well as I, what is there.
Interpretation
Teaching should be personalized and dependent on the emotional and personal background of the learner.
This quote emphasizes the importance of understanding a student's emotional state and personal history before imparting knowledge. Cus D'Amato suggests that effective teaching involves peeling away layers to reach the core of a person, highlighting the need for empathy and personal connection in the educational process.
In practice
In a workshop about mentoring, a speaker mentioned this quote to stress the importance of connecting with mentees.
When two men step into the ring, one and only one deserves to win. When you step into the ring, you gotta know you deserve to win. You gotta know destiny owes you victory , cause you trained harder than your opponent. You sparred harder. You ran farther.
Greatness is not a measure of how great you are but how great others came to be because of you
The hero and the coward both feel exactly the same fear, only the hero confronts his fear and converts it into fire.
Every fighter that ever lived had fear. A boy comes to me and tells me that he's not afraid, if I believed him I'd say he's a liar or there's something wrong with him. I'd send him to a doctor to find out what the hell's the matter with him, because this is not a normal reaction. The fighter that's gone into the ring and hasn't experienced fear is either a liar or a psychopath.
Boxing is a contest of character and ingenuity. The boxer with more will, determination, desire, and intelligence is always the one who comes out the victor.
To see a man beaten not by a better opponent but by himself is a tragedy.
If your plan is for one year plant rice. If your plan is for ten years plant trees. If your plan is for one hundred years educate children.
Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors; and capacity, if wisely improved, and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence.
We wish to learn all the curious, outlandish ways of all the different countries, so that we can "show off" and astonish people when we get home. We wish to excite the envy of our untraveled friends with our strange foreign fashions which we can't shake off.
No employment can be managed without arithmetic, no mechanical invention without geometry.
Words and ideas work in the short run to get you through school and to impress educators and employers. But they do not work in the long run or in the deep run. We soon find ourselves separate and without wonder.
There's an art to asking questions. Briefings are valuable but normally communicate primarily what the subordinate leader wants you to know, and often the picture they provide is incomplete.
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