Parker J. Palmer Quotes

Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life.

Community is a place where the connections felt in our hearts make themselves known in the bonds between people, and where the tuggings and pullings of those bonds keep opening our hearts.

I now know myself to be a person of weakness and strength, liability and giftedness, darkness and light. I now know that to be whole means to reject none of it but to embrace all of it.

One of the hardest things we must do sometimes is to be present to another person's pain without trying to "fix" it, to simply stand respectfully at the edge of that person's mystery and misery.

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

Self-care is never a selfish act - it is only good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer others.

Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you.

Community doesn't just create abundance - community is abundance. If we could learn that equation from the world of nature, the human world might be transformed.

At its deepest level, I think teaching is about bringing people into communion with each other, with yourself as the teacher, and with the subject you are teaching.

Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.

We think it's about little techniques and tricks, but techniques only take you so far. We need teachers who care about kids, who care about what they teach, and who can communicate with kids.

Violence is what happens when we don't know what else to do with our suffering.

I will always have fears, but I need not be my fears, for I have other places within myself from which to speak and act.

Each time a door closes, the rest of the world opens up.

The spiritual life is about becoming more at home in your own skin.

A scholar is committed to building on knowledge that others have gathered, correcting it, confirming it, enlarging it.

The ancient human question 'Who am I?' leads inevitably to the equally important question 'Whose am I?' - for there is no self outside of relationship.

A leader is a person who must take special responsibility for what's going on inside of himself or herself ... lest the act of leadership create more harm than good.

In every story I have heard, good teachers share one trait: a strong sense of personal identity infuses their work.

When someone says 'I'm so disillusioned', I say 'Congratulations! You've lost another illusion.'

I like to say that before we can create an external space in which to receive people, we have to create an internal space in which to receive them.

What do I want to let go of and what do I want to give myself to?

Humility is the only lens though which great things can be seen--and once we have seen them, humility is the only posture possible.

It's more important to be in right relationship than it is to be right.

We need a coat with two pockets. In one pocket there is dust, and in the other pocket there is gold. We need a coat with two pockets to remind us who we are.

... the stranger is not a threat but an opportunity to grow in my view of reality, to grow in my own sense of possibility

I want my inner truth to be the plumb line for the choices I make about my life - about the work that I do and how I do it, about the relationships I enter into and how I conduct them.

Mentoring is a mutuality that requires more than meeting the right teacher: the teacher must meet the right student.

How easily we get trapped in that which is not essential - in looking good, winning at competition, gathering power and wealth - when simply being alive is the gift beyond measure.

For me, teaching is about weaving a web of connectedness between myself, my students, the subject I'm teaching, and the larger world.

Don't let anyone or anything rob you of the beauty and meaning at the heart of life. It's your birthright gift.

Is the life I'm living the life that wants to live in me?

As I teach, I project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject, and our way of being together.

The highest form of love is the love that allows for intimacy without the annihilation of difference.

Connection and connectedness are other words for community and communion.

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

I am not sure that any sight or sound on earth is as exquisite as the hushed descent of a sky full of snow.

Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher.

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

By choosing integrity, I become more whole, but wholeness does not mean perfection. It means becoming more real by acknowledging the whole of who I am.

The inner life of any great thing will be incomprehensible to me until I develop and deepen an inner life of my own.

The power for authentic leadership is found not in external arrangements, but in the human heart.

Science requires an engagement with the world, a live encounter between the knower and the known.

We listen for guidance everywhere except from within.

Why does a literary scholar study the world of "fiction"? To show us that the facts can never be understood except in communion with the imagination.

I think the church needs to be much more countercultural than that and invite people into slowing down, into a "Be-still-and-know-that-I-am-God" mindset.

Teaching like any truly human activity emerges from one's inwardness.

Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already posses.

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.

We are participants in a vast communion of being, and if we open ourselves to its guidance, we can learn anew how to live in this great and gracious community of truth.