Quotes

Favorite Quotes and Thoughts

“Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.”
–Martin Luther King

“A liberal education is at the heart of a civil society, and at the heart of a liberal education is the act of teaching.”
–A. Bartlett Giamatti

“Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.”
–Jacques Barzun

“Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.”
–John Dewey

“We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.”
–Malcolm Gladwell

“Do something each day or two for no other reason than its difficult, so that, when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and unready to stand the test.”
–William James

“Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.”
–Thomas Jefferson

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
–Charles Darwin

“Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.”
–Henry David Thoreau

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex… It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”
–Albert Einstein

“They are able who think they are able.”
–Virgil

“If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.”
–Mahatama Gandhi

“Self-belief does not necessarily ensure success, but self-disbelief assuredly spawns failure.”
–Albert Bandura

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again, Fail better.”
–Samuel Beckett

“The fastest way to succeed is to double your failure rate.”
–Thomas Watson Sr.

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.”
–C. S. Lewis

“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”
–John F. Kennedy

 

Some of My Own

“The real value of academic optimism in schools is its embrace of potential, with its strength and resilience, rather than pathology, with its weakness and helplessness.” –Hoy

“Mindfulness is a paradox; it sees problems as opportunities and views successes as problematic; it is both optimistic and skeptical.” –Hoy

“Make mindfulness a habit of thought and action; it transforms chance into serendipity.” –Hoy

“Too much abstraction hides reality; too much prescription denies complexity.” –Hoy

“Intuition is the ‘magic dust’ of intellectual experience and recognition.” –Hoy