Quotes About Leadership by
Parker Palmer

Read and be inspired by quotes about leadership by Parker Palmer. Some of these quotes about leadership are from the book Let Your Life Speak, others from his book The Courage to Teach and other writings.

Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am. ~Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak

Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher. ~Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach

The only guidance we can get on the inner journey comes through relationships in which others can help us discern our leadings. ~Parker Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness

I will never be a good teacher for students who insist on remaining wallflowers throughout their careers — that is simply one of my many limits. But perhaps I can develop enough self-understanding to keep inviting the wallflowers onto the floor, holding open the possibility that some of them might hear the music, accept the invitation, and join me in the dance of teaching and learning. ~Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak

Each time I walk into a classroom, I can choose the place within myself from which my teaching will come, just as I can choose the place within my students toward which my teaching will be aimed. I need not teach from a fearful place: I can teach from curiosity or hope or empathy or honesty, places that are as real within me as are my fears. I can have fear, but I need not be fear—if I am willing to stand someplace else in my inner landscape. ~Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach

In my own life, as winters turn into spring, I find it not only hard to cope with mud but also hard to credit the small harbingers of larger life to come, hard to hope until the outcome is secure. Spring teaches me to look more carefully for the green stems of possibility; for the intuitive hunch that may turn into a larger insight, for the glance or touch that may thaw a frozen relationship, for the stranger's act of kindness that makes the world seem hospitable again. ~Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak

One sign that I am violating my own nature in the name of nobility is a condition called burnout. Though usually regarded as the result of trying to give too much, burnout in my experience results from trying to give what I do not possess--the ultimate in giving too little! Burnout is a state of emptiness, to be sure, but it does not result from giving all I have: it merely reveals the nothingsness from which I was trying to give in the first place. ~Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak


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