Some of My Favorite Quotations ...

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure,

It is our Light, not our darkness, that frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
    
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn't serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking
So that other people won't feel insecure around you.
   
We are born to make manifest the Glory of God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.
And as we let our own Light shine,
We unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
   
As we are liberated  from our fears,
Our presence automatically liberates others

~Nelson Mandela, in his 1994 Inaugural Speech, quoted Marianne Williamson's prayer from her book,  
A Return to Love (Harper Collins reprint, 1996)

The ultimate aim of education
[must be] to take each one
out of his isolated class,
and into the one humanity. 

~ Paul Goodman

You must be
true to yourself.

Strong enough to be
true to yourself.
Brave enough to be
strong enough to be
true to yourself.

Wise enough to be
 brave enough to be
strong enough to
shape yourself from what
you actually are.

 ~Sylvia Ashton-Warner (in Myself)

You cannot measure a love for learning or a joy of knowledge or a passion  for life. You cannot measure those things with a standardized test but you can sure kill them.

   ~Bill Harley, singer and poet, as quoted in NPR commentary, June 200

The hottest spot in Hell is reserved for those who,
in time of crisis, preserve their neutrality. 

 ~Dante, The Divine Comedy

~ e.e. cummings

ABUSES AND USURPATIONS
Find out just what the people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
               ~Frederick Douglass, Civil Rights Activist, Aug. 4, 1857

Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be
counted counts.

 ~Albert Einstein

It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a
little. Do what you can.   

 ~Sydney Smith

Democracies die behind closed doors.  

~Judge Damon J. Keith, in The New York Times, 8/27/02

To carry feelings of childhood into the powers of adulthood,
to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty
with the appearances which every day for years
has rendered familiar, this is the character and privilege of genius,
and one of the marks which distinguish it from talent.
                ~Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.
                ~William Stafford

Art is a hammer to beat the world, not a mirror to reflect it.
                                         ~Vladimir Majakovskij

Original:
Cómo reconocer una obra de arte? ¿Cómo separarla, aunque sólo sea un momento, de su aparato crítico, de sus exégetas, de sus incansables plagiarios, de sus ninguneadores, de su final destino de soledad? Es fácil. Hay que traducirla.
                                         ~Roberto Bolaño

English translation:
How do you recognize a work of art? How can it be kept apart, even if only for a moment, from its critics, commentators, its indefatigable plagiarists, its defacers and its final destiny in solitude? Simple—just translate it.
                         ~Roberto Bolaño, Chilean author (1953)

The probability

that we may fail

in the struggle

ought not to deter us

from the support of a cause

we believe to be just.
                        
   ~Abraham Lincoln

Every second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe,
a moment that never was before and never will be again.

And what do we teach our children in school?

We teach them that two and two make four and that Paris is the capital of France.

We should say to each of them,
"Do you know who you are?
You are a marvel.
You are unique.
In the millions of years that have passed,
there has never been another child like you."

                                                                ~ Pablo Casals

It is important for pedagogy not to be the prisoner of too much
certainty, but instead to be aware of both the relativity of its powers
and the difficulties of translating its ideals into practice.

~Loris Malaguzzi,  The Hundred Languages of Children  (1993)

Children are people.

They grow into tomorrow
only as they live today.

~ John Dewey

 ~Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays

 ~Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays

Life is a tragedy for those who feel,
and a comedy for those who think.

If the teacher is indeed wise
he does not bid you enter
the house of his wisdom,
but rather leads you to
the threshold of your own mind

 ~ Kahlil Gibran, in The Prophet

If we are to reach real peace in the world ... we shall have to begin with the children; and if they will grow up in their natural innocence, we won't have to struggle; we won't have to pass fruitless ideal resolutions, but we shall go from love to love and peace to peace, until at last all the corners of the world are covered with that peace and love for which consciously or unconsciously the whole world is hungering.

 ~ Ghandi

---

 

Part of the art of choosing difficulties is to select those that are indeed just manageable. If the difficulties chosen are too easy, life is boring; if they are too hard, life is defeating. The trick is to choose trouble for oneself in the direction of what one would like to become at a level of difficulty close to the edge of one's competence. 

When one achieves this fine tuning of his life, he will know zest and joy and deep fulfillment.

                             ~ Nicholas Hobbs, Vanderbilt University

... the only real gold standard in a program
meant to respond to and support the real people
who inhabit it, was one of perfect adaptability —
we're doing well if we're doing right by these folks,
here and now ... a significant shift in what I do with my
learning about anyplace else, including Reggio.

         ~Donna King from Durham, North Carolina

It has been agreed that every man shall have a cow.
We give him half a cow, to be getting on with.
He doesn't know what to do with half a cow, and leaves it lying about.
This proves he didn't really want or need a cow in the first place.
We take it away from him.
                         ~ Paraphrased from G. K. Chesterton

WHY HANDS-ON?

I Tried to Teach My Child with Books;
He Gave Me Only Puzzled Looks.
I Tried to Teach My Child with Words;
They Passed Him by Often Unheard.
Despairingly, I Turned Aside;
"How Shall I Teach this Child?" I cried.

Into My Hand He Put the Key,
"Come," He Said, "Play with Me."
 

 ~Author Unknown

There can be no knowledge without emotion.
We may be aware of a truth
yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours.
To the cognition of the brain
must be added the experience of the soul.

Let them remember that there is a meaning beyond absurdity.
Let them be sure that every little deed counts, that every word has power,
and that [you] can ... do your share to redeem the world
 in spite of all absurdities and all frustrations and all disappointments.

       ~ Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

To know someone here or there
with whom you can feel there is understanding
in spite of distances or thoughts unexpressed —
That can make this earth a garden.

 ~ Goethe

No woman is required to build the world by destroying herself.

 ~ Rabbi Sofer (17th Century)

A Nation is not conquered
Until the hearts of its women
Are on the ground.
Then it is done, no matter
How brave its warriors
Nor how strong its weapons.

 ~ Cheyenne Song

Remember, meanings are never static, 
univocal, or final; they are always singly voiced 
of other meanings. The central act of adults, 
therefore, is to activate, especially indirectly, 
the meaning-making competencies of children as a basis of all learning.
They must try to capture the right moments, and then find the right approaches, 
for bringing together, into a fruitful dialogue,
their meanings and interpretations with those of the children. 
                                       ~ Loris Malaguzzi 

In Edwards, C.  One Hundred Languages of Children, 1993

E-mail:  sydney@eceteacher.org, www.eceteacher.org • (C) Copyright Sydney Gurewitz Clemens, 2007