People learn twenty-five percent from their teacher, twenty-five percent from listening to themselves, twenty-five percent from their friends, and twenty-five percent from time.
Do not believe anything on the mere authority of teachers or priests. Accept as true and as the guide to your life only that which accords with your own reason and experience, after thorough investigation. Accept only that which contributes to the well-being of yourself and others.
Everyone's looking for the perfect teacher, but although their teachings might be divine, teachers are all too human, and that's something people find hard to accept. Don't confuse the teacher with the lesson, the ritual with the ecstasy, the transmitter of the symbol with the symbol itself.
We want our teachers to be trained so they can meet the obligations, their obligations as teachers. We want them to know how to teach the science of reading. In order to make sure there's not this kind of federal-federal cufflink.
Audiences of critical thinkers are my favorite kinds of audiences. There are jokes I tell in the show that don't get laughs unless I am in front of an audience of critical thinkers. Put me in front of a crowd of science teachers or astronauts! The guileless aren't our audience - it's the critical thinkers we love.
Tonight, somewhere in America, a young person, let's say a young man, will struggle to fall to sleep, wrestling alone with a secret he's held as long as he can remember. Soon, perhaps, he will decide it's time to let that secret out. What happens next depends on him, his family, as well as his friends and his teachers and his community. But it also depends on us - on the kind of society we engender, the kind of future we build.
If I were travelling with two partners, one virtuous and one dishonest, both would be useful as teachers. I would perceive what's good of the first one and I would imitate him whereas I would try to correct in me the defects I may see in the second one.
If you would be a better teacher, teach by the spirit. That is the thing that gives strength and power, meaning and life, to our otherwise weak efforts... remember, you cannot give away that which you do not possess. Study the life of the master. You do not have to have a college degree to be an efficient teacher. But you do have to become acquainted with the life and teachings of the master to be an effective teacher in the church.
Only love for the Supreme Lord is true Bhakti. Love for any other being, however great, is not Bhakti. The "Supreme Lord" here means Ishvara, the concept of which transcends what you in the West mean by the personal God. "He from whom this universe proceeds, in whom it rests, and to whom it returns, He is Ishvara, the Eternal, the Pure, the All-Merciful, the Almighty, the Ever-Free, the All-Knowing, the Teacher of all teachers, the Lord who of His own nature is inexpressible Love."
As a teacher, I can help my students see what is working and not working. I can show them certain solutions. I can guide them to books that will serve as role models. Largely, though, one learns to write almost like developing muscle memory, and this requires years of effort.
Do you know that moment when you paint a landscape as a child and, when you're maybe under seven or something, the sky is just a blue stripe across the top of the paper? And then there's that somewhat disappointing moment when the teacher tells you that the sky actually comes down in amongst all the branches. And it's like life changes at that moment and becomes much more complicated and a little bit more boring, as it's rather tedious to fill in the branches.
We've got to make sure that teachers are respected, that they are rewarded, that young people like yourself who have talent and want to work with people, that you're able to support yourself and live out a great life being a teacher.
When someone with the authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing. Yet you know you exist and others like you, that this is a game with mirrors. It takes some strength of soul--and not just individual strength, but collective understanding--to resist this void, this nonbeing, into which are thrust, and to stand up, demanding to be seen and heard.