“The very best thing you can be in life is a teacher, provided you are crazy in love with what you teach, and that your classes consist of eighteen students or fewer. Classes of eighteen students or fewer are a family, and feel and act like one.”
“The new dumb, is now wisdom.”
“I want to live until I learn everything -absolutely everything- then just die... Or wait, no; I want to still live to teach it to other people أنا عايز أعيش لحد ما أتعلم كل حاجة على الإطلاق، وبعد كدا أموت عادي ... أو أستنى، لأ، عايز أفضل عايش عشان أعلمها لناس تانية”
“There was a seminar for advanced students in Zürich that I was teaching and von Neumann was in the class. I came to a certain theorem, and I said it is not proved and it may be difficult. Von Neumann didn’t say anything but after five minutes he raised his hand. When I called on him he went to the blackboard and proceeded to write down the proof. After that I was afraid of von Neumann.”
“The teaching of Jesus Christ has as its central theme unfoldment towards a realization of immortality.”
“Mathematics education is much more complicated than you expected, even though you expected it to be more complicated than you expected.”
“For Socrates, all virtues were forms of knowledge. To train someone to manage an account for Goldman Sachs is to educate him or her in a skill. To train them to debate stoic, existential, theological, and humanist ways of grappling with reality is to educate them in values and morals. A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management techniques for wisdom, which fails to understand that the measure of a civilization is its compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condemns itself to death. Morality is the product of a civilization, but the elites know little of these traditions. They are products of a moral void. They lack clarity about themselves and their culture. They can fathom only their own personal troubles. They do not see their own bases or the causes of their own frustrations. They are blind to the gaping inadequacies in our economic, social, and political structure and do not grasp that these structures, which they have been taught to serve, must be radically modified or even abolished to stave off disaster. They have been rendered mute and ineffectual. “What we cannot speak about” Ludwig Wittgenstein warned “we must pass over in silence.”
“Much as a teacher may wince at the thought, he is also an entertainer—for unless he can hold his audience, he cannot really instruct or edify them.”
“The transformed person is a revolutionary only because he has revolutionized himself. He gives the people inspiration by holding up a mirror to their inner substance.”
“Accountability makes no sense when it undermines the larger goals of education.”
“It is no accident that Sufis find that they can connect most constructively with people who are well integrated into the world, as well as having higher aims, and that those who adopt a sensible attitude towards society and life as generally known can usually absorb Sufi teachings very well indeed”
“The school takes its coloring from your own attitude,”
“The new naval treaty permits the United States to spend a billion dollars on warships—a sum greater than has been accumulated by all our endowed institutions of learning in their entire history. Unintelligence could go no further! ... [In Great Britain, the situation is similar.] ... Until the figures are reversed, ... nations deceive themselves as to what they care about most.”
“Every pedagogical situation can be thought of as a kind of triangle among three parties: the student, the teacher, and the world that student and teacher investigate together.”
“Helping teacher leaders come to understand their gifts is the first step in developing a specialty. Some leaders are great coaches and should focus on instructional leadership in a district or network where that is valued and supported. Great conceptual thinkers are good in startup mode but the daily grind of leading a school doesn t suit them. Other leaders thrive on the turnaround challenge. The dynamic blended future of education will allow more role specialization.”
“A good teacher does not teach all that he knows. He teaches all that the learners need to know at the time, and all that the learners can accountably learn in the time given.”
“The first thing, of course, is to find a vacancy, a place where a teacher is wanted, and the second thing is to make the school officials believe you are just the person for the position.”