181 Quotes by Tracy Kidder

Most teachers have little control over school policy or curriculum or choice of texts or special placement of students, but most have a great deal of autonomy inside the classroom. To a degree shared by only a few other occupations, such as police work, public education rests precariously on the skill and virtue of the people at the bottom of the institutional pyramid.

Don't worry about being worried. You're heading out on an adventure and you can always change your mind along the way and try something else.

Writing is revision. All prose responds to work.

There were Colorgraphics and Summagraphics; Altergo and C. Itoh; and Ball. “Hey, wait a minute. What’s Ball doing here? Aren’t they the mason jar people?” “Yeah, but they also make disk drives.

The only real nation is humanity.

When others write about people who live on the edge, who challenge their comfortable lives – and it has happened to me – they usually do it in a way that allows a reader a way out. You could render generosity into pathology, commitment into obsession. That’s all in the repertory of someone who wants to put the reader at ease rather than conveying the truth in a compelling manner.

The central belief of liberation theology – to provide a preferential option for the poor... providing medicine in the places that needed it the most...

I wrote a novel about the combat experiences I didn’t have in Vietnam.

God gives us humans everything we need to flourish, but he’s not the one who’s supposed to divvy up the loot. That charge was laid upon us.