149 Quotes by Parker J. Palmer

Authority is granted to people who are perceived as authoring their own words, their own actions, their own lives, rather than playing a scripted role at great remove from their own hearts. When teachers depend on the coercive powers of law or technique, they have no authority at all.

We are here not only to transform the world but also to be transformed.

By attaching our identity to things only a few can have, we ignore the intrinsic preciousness of all human life.

The civility we need will not come from watching our tongues. It will come from valuing our differences.

Good teachers join self and subject and students in the fabric of life.

Every profession that attracts people for “reasons of the heart” is a profession in which people and the work they do suffer from losing heart. Like teachers, these people are asking, “How can we take heart again so that we can give heart to others?” – which is why they undertook their work in the first place.

Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. Knowing this gives me hope that human wholeness – mine, yours, ours – need not be a utopian dream, if we can use devastation as a seedbed for new life.

Bill Moyers has said, “The antidote, the only antidote, to the power of organized money in Washington is the power of organized people.”10.

The winters will drive you crazy until you learn to get out into them.