There is only one difference between teacher and disciple: the former is slightly less afraid than the latter.” ~Deidre O’Neill, known as Edde (p. 213)
The real difficulty, the difficulty which has baffled the sages of all times, is rather this: how can we make our teaching so potent in the motional life of man, that its influence should withstand the pressure of the elemental psychic forces in the individual?
Only great pain is, as the teacher of great suspicion, the ultimate liberator of the spirit...I doubt whether such pain improves us-but I do know it deepens us.
If everyone will try to understand the core of his own religion and adhere to it, and will not allow false teachers to dictate to him, there will be no room left for quarrelling.
One Mongolian leader became a very, very brutal dictator and eventually became a murderer. Previously, he was a monk, and then he became a revolutionary. Under the influence of his new ideology, he actually killed his own teacher. Pol Pot's family background was Buddhist. Whether he himself was a Buddhist at a young age, I don't know. Even Chairman Mao's family background was Buddhist. So one day, if the Dalai Lama becomes a mass murderer, he will become the most deadly of mass murderers.
The grand obstacle to the salvation of the scribes and Pharisees was their pride, vanity and self-love. They lived on each other's praise. If they had acknowledged Christ as the only good teacher, they must have given up the good opinion of the multitude; and they chose rather to lose their souls than to forfeit their reputation among men!
Humiliation and mental oppression by ignorant and selfish teachers wreak havoc in the youthful mind that can never be undone and often exert a baleful influence in later life.
I barely got out of school, I got out of school, mainly, because I was a champ, and I actually didn't pass. I won't name the teachers that put me through, but I want. If I was not a Muslim, or a follower of the Honorable Elijah Mohammed I couldn't talk to somebody for two minutes. I believe I can hold my own as an intelligent conversation, but it all come from the Honorable Elijah Mohammed.
There are moments as a teacher when I'm conscious that I'm trotting out the same exact phrase my professor used with me years ago. It's an eerie feeling, as if my old mentor is not just in the room, but in my shoes, using me as his mouthpiece.
Experience is the only teacher we have. We may talk and reason all our lives, but we shall not understand a word of truth until we experience it ourselves.