My favorite quotes:

"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 most frightens us. We ask ourselves, "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?" Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so other people won't feel insecure around you. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us, it is in every one. And as we let our light shine, we give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fears our presence liberates others." (Nelson Mandela).

"A system of education where students are forced to memorize answers which will later have to be regurgitated on a standardized test is a system that uses the pedagogy of the answer; in such a system the brain is used as a deposit of knowledge, of book knowledge." RN

President Adams said: "The two things you need from school are: learn how to live and learn how to make a living."

Christian preacher Joyce Meyer said in front of thousands of churchgoers: "if you don't know how to forgive; you are waisting your time looking for God here, He doesn't answer to those who don't forgive." I say to those students attending classes in a traditional school: "if you don't know how to learn, you are waisting your time there; the knowledge you are seeking should be mastered, not only memorized." RN

If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude. See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The college, which should be a place of delightful labor, is made odious and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded spirits. I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.°® - - MARTHA GRAHAM (from Ariel's email)

"We are governed not by armies and police but by ideas," Mona Caird, 1892.

"I move slowly because I am in a hurry." RN

The biggest mistake people make in life is not making a living at doing what they most enjoy.- Malcolm S. Forbes (1919-1990)

All good men are happy when they choose to be their own authors. Those who choose to have others edit their pathways, must live on the edge of another man’s sword.  (Julie Arabi)

"We live our lives according to our idea of death." RN

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."
Mark Twain in Innocents Abroad

"A child can always teach adults three things: to be happy without a reason; to always be busy doing something and to know how to strongly ask for what he wants." (Paulo Coelho)

"In any relationship, the one who has control over her(his) orgasms is the one who holds the power." R.N.

"If life ended when we die; then it would be perfectly alright to let everyone live their lives according to their idea of death, and to let everyone die according to their idea of life." R.N.

"Who had the idea of filling the church with images of bloody crucified bodies and with paintings depicting sad faces mourning; instead of filling it with symbols of life, peace and happiness? For sure it was not Jesus Christ's idea; but whoever wanted believers to live a life with fear of dieying instead of living it with happiness, since it is a gift from God, then, that someone has been pretty successful at it. It is now so easy to manipulate those who live their lives full of fear for anything." R.N.

"Education is not a race." Elliot W. Eisner

"One subverts democracy (even though one does this in the name of democracy) by making it irrational; by making it rigid in order "to defend it against totalitarian rigidity"; by making it hateful, when it can only develop in a context of love and respect for persons; by closing it, when it only lives in openness; by nourishing it with fear when it must be couragious; by making it an instrument of the powerful in the oppression of the weak; by militarizing it against the people; by alienating a nation in the name of democracy.

One defends democracy by leading it to the state Mannheim calls "militant democracy"- a democracy which does not fear the people, which suppress privilege, which can plan without becoming rigid, which defends itself without hate, which is nourished by a critical spirit rather than irrationality."

p.58; Paulo Freire, Education For Critical Conciousness, 1973.

When a superior man knows the causes which make
instruction successful, and those which make it of no effect,
he can be a teacher of others.  Thus in his teaching, he leads
and does not drag; he strengthens and does not discourage;
he opens the way but does not conduct to the end without
the learner's own efforts.  Leading and not dragging
produces harmony.  Strengthening and not discouraging
makes attainment easy.  Opening the way and not
conducting to the end makes the learner thoughtful.  He
who produces harmony, easy attainment, and
thoughtfulness may be pronounced a skillful teacher.
 
– Confucius,
Book XVI – HSIO KI  (Record on the Subject of
Education)

"When you find among all your belongings things that you no longer need and you take them directly to those who need them; right there and then you would have started to change the world." RN

"By buying what I can afford and need, not what I want; I have deviated from thinking spending and moved toward thinking saving." Latifa Ward (Evergreen student)

"The most fundamental work in the traditional educational system is oriented to use the brain only to save memorized knowledge; instead of letting its natural use which is to learn by experimentation and research. The brain is mainly a laboratory to construct knowledge, it IS NOT only a deposit of memorized stuff."  RNakasone

"The role of the new education should be to facilitate one's access to one's own mind" RNakasone

"We were living in another world and when we died we were sent to this paradise, the Earth. The rich ones can not enjoy this paradise because they concentrate their life in staying rich; most poor people can not enjoy this paradise either because they are too busy trying to become rich. The Earth is a paradise because  we can enjoy nature for free; we can enjoy the sun for free, all we need to enjoy life is to be healthy, and to stay healthy we just need to eat healthy, breath clean air and drink water naturally clean." RNakasone

The Mayans say: "we are corn" and that saying drives their lives; we should all say: "we are peace", and we would never stay in acts of war because we could not be what we are not. Raul Nakasone

"We should work while the lazy ones are sleeping" said a friend from my childhood.

"The day you were born everybody was happy; only you were crying. Live your life in such a way that when you die, everybody cries and you be the only one with no reason to cry." Read when I was 14 in the Reade's Digest, don't remember the author.

"Integrity is to do the right thing even when none is watching" heard in graduation ceremony at Marshall M.S. 2007

"Men have said to me, 'you write about women's things', and I think: yes, there is a culture that I'm writing about," Woolfe says. "Men write about war, and being a soldier, but being a parent can be life changing as well, especially when you're juggling between that and a career that you love. It's not just about getting dinner on the table. It's about where your soul belongs, and how much you belong to each aspect of your life - and how that can change."Sue Woolfe

"If you realized that the nurtured spiritual part of yourself would accompany you on your eternal journey and that everything that you have labored so hard to accumulate would vanish the instant you depart this world, would it alter your daily agenda?" Walter Cooper

"Better than saying that in our program we trust in our students 100%; it is to say that we openly accept and value their courage to think out of the box." DR

"To know how to forgive is an enormous source of energy while maintaining anger shortens life and lowers its quality." RN

"When we always do our best, there is no room for defeats nor for repentance." RN

"The main role of the new education must be to facilitate the access to one's own mind."  Raul Nakasone

"To get older in good terms means to know that everything can always be done better and to be in peace with oneself and with everybody else." RN

"Competition breeds resentment and hostility, while collaboration breeds friendship and cooperation." By former student Javier Berrios


"The new school needs to promote thinking over believing and graduate thinkers instead of believers." RN

"the battle for liberation now is not in the fields; it is in the mind." Raul Nakasone

"The weak cannot forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong." Mahatma Gandhi

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
-Gandhi

"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe simply because it has been handed down for many generations.  Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumoured by many.  Do not believe in anything simply because it is written in Holy Scriptures.  Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of teachers, elders or wise men.  Believe only after careful observation and analysis, when you find that it agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all. Then accept it and live up to it."
The Buddha, on Belief, from the Kalama Sutra.

"Changing limitations into opportunities is the work ahead" MGraney

"The most powerful man is the one who knows himself" Aristotheles

"The most powerful weapon the oppressor has in his hands is the mind of the oppressed" S.B.

"Hate crimes are, in reality, fear crimes."Ann Szwajkowski (Evergreen student)

``Imagination is more important than knowledge,'' Einstein

"The richest person in the world is the one who knows she has enough of everything." NN

"I believe that social justice is a consequence of a society formed by individuals who
are free from oppression".  (RN)

"I am not interested in organizing the oppressed ones under one leader because then
the leader, once in power, becomes the new oppressor." (RN)

"The main reason why I am in this program is just this, we learn by living."  Granty

"To escape a prison, it is necessary to see the prison itself." (From ACT therapy)

"If somebody does something wrong to you, send them flowers" Jason Martin

"The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference." Patricia Parsons (Evergreen student)

"I think teaching out of duty rather than desire is a disaster, for the teacher and the taught." Sarah Pedersen

"We start teaching children how to fish, when they ask for it for the second time." NA Elder.

"We facilitate therapeutic sessions to those who are still addicted to teaching." Learners Anonimous (D,R,Y & P)

"You will be free the day you share what you know without being a missionary, a liberator or a developer." R.N.

"If you are learning and you are happy and you still think something is not right; it is
because you still believe that suffering is missing. One can learn without suffering." (D.R.)

"Not all priests are free from pedophilia; likewise, not all especialized in multiculturalism
are free from being racists."    (RN)

"Many times, teachers who speak most of the time in class, become a wall between the
learner and the knowledge she is seeking."  (RN)

"It is not true that a teacher can teach all her students; what is more certain is that the ones
who become interested will learn from her or from any other sources."  (RN)

"Just like many times the church has nothing to do with god; many times school has
nothing to do with education."   (RN)

"History is the lie commonly agreed upon."  Voltaire

"Education should be a road to freedom; not a highway to domestication." (R.N.)

"We don't learn by being told" (?)

"When THE answer to a problem is given, all learning stops." (Yvonne Peterson)

"Only the oppressed ones can liberate themselves and their oppressors."  (Paulo Freire)

"The open curriculum and direct teaching gives you the grades for school life; the hidden curriculum
and brain washing teaching gives you the knowledge for real life."  (R.N.)

"A wise person changes her/his mind; a fool, never." (Einstein)

"Luck is when preparation meets opportunity". (Abraham Lincoln)

"Enjoy life because you will be dead for a long time."  (?)

"In the final analysis, everything is about you and God; not about you and them." (Mother Theresa)

"An education system for the people does not encourage brain drain."  (R.N.)