Quotes on Teaching

A teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single good action, for one single good poem, accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with rows and rows of natural objects, classified with name and form.

Abstain from all sinful, unwholesome actions, perform only pious wholesome ones, purify the mind; this is the teaching of enlightened ones

Good questions work on us, we don't work on them. They are not a project to be completed but a doorway opening onto greater depth of understanding, actions that will take us into being more fully alive.

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.

The gentlest thing in the world overcomes the hardest thing in the world. That which has no substance enters where there is no space. This shows the value of non-action. Teaching without words, performing without actions: that is the Master's way.

The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.

True religion comes not front the teaching of men or the reading of books; it is the awakening of the spirit within us, consequent upon pure and heroic action.

Our goal is not so much the imparting of knowledge as the unveiling and developing of spiritual energy.

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.

We should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit.

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

There may be frugality which is not economy. A community, that withholds the means of education from its children, withholds the bread of life and starves their souls.

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

All human beings are born with unique gifts. The healthy functioning community depends on realizing the capacity to develop each gift.

The dramatic threat of ecological breakdown is teaching us the extent to which greed and selfishness are contrary to the order of creation. ...A given culture reveals its understanding of life through the choices it makes in production and consumption... a great deal of educational and cultural work is urgently needed, including the education of consumers in the responsible use of their power of choice.

I come to writing the same way I come to teaching, which is that my goal is always to create life-long readers.

I think teaching a man to hate himself is much more criminal than teaching a man to hate someone else.

We teachers can only help the work going on, as servants wait upon a master.

The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one.

Let us labor for the security of free thought, free speech, pure morals, unfettered religious sentiments, and equal rights and privileges for all men, irrespective of nationality, color, or religion;.... leave the matter of religious teaching to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contribution. Keep church and state forever separate.

Much that was called religion has carried an unconscious attitude of hostility toward life. True religion must teach that life is filled with joys pleasing to the eye of God, that knowledge without action is empty. All men must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax. The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you’ve always known.