Quotes
Some direct or indirect contributions to practices and theories on learning and teaching. Quotes that inspired us while designing the MEL and MET courses.
Carol Dweck
“Becoming is better than being.“
“I don’t mind losing as long as I see improvement or I feel I’ve done as well as I possibly could.“
M. Csíkszentmihályi
“Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person’s capacity to act.“
Daniel Goleman
“Our emotional mind will harness the rational mind to its purposes, for our feelings and reactions– rationalizations– justifying them in terms of the present moment, without realizing the influence of our emotional memory.“
Tim Gallwey
“There is always an inner game being played in your mind no matter what outer game you are playing. How aware you are of this game can make the difference between success and failure.”
David Kolb
“Learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience.“
Carl Rogers
“It is that the individual has within him or her Self vast resources for self-understanding, for altering her or his self-concept, attitudes, and self-directed behavior—and that these resources can be tapped if only a definable climate of facilitative psychological attitudes can be provided.“
Jon Kabat-Zinn
“Meditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity which at bottom is about not trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else, but simply to realize where you already are.“
Ellen Langer
“Mindfulness can encourage creativity when the focus is on the process and not the product.”
“By mindfully considering data not as stable commodities but as sources of ambiguity, we become more observant.”
Arthur Zajonc
“Educate our students as whole people, and they will bring all of who they are to the demands of being human in private and public life. The present and future well-being of humankind asks nothing less of us.” (Palmer, Zajonc, Scribner, 2010)
Albert Bandura
“People’s beliefs about their abilities have a profound effect on those abilities.“
Thich Nhat Hanh
“The quality of our presence is the most positive element that we can contribute to the world.“
“Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.“
Ajahn Sumedho
“The mind of an enlightened human being is flexible and adaptable. The mind of the ignorant person is conditioned and fixed.“
Lisa Randall
“Why should we have perfect senses that can directly perceive everything? The big lesson of physics over the centuries is how much is hidden from our view.“
Richard Feynman
“Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.“
John Whitmore
“Coaching is unlocking people’s potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them.“
Malcolm Knowles
“The learner should be actively involved in the learning process.“
“An essential aspect of maturing is developing the ability to take increasing responsibility for our own lives—to become increasingly self-directed.”
Antonio Damasio
“Perhaps the most indispensable thing we can do as human beings, every day of our lives, is remind ourselves and others of our complexity, fragility, finiteness, and uniqueness.”
Daniel Dennett
“The secret of happiness: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.”
Daniel Kahneman
“Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.”
Francisco J. Varela
“The result, in this world view, is that real freedom comes not from the decisions of an ego-self’s “will” but from action without any Self whatsoever.”
Jack Kornfield
“Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting.”
Yuval Noah Harari
“The most common reaction of the human mind to achievement is not satisfaction, but craving for more.”
Michael S. Gazzaniga
“I believe that things just happen in life, and pretty much after the fact, we make up a story to make it all seem rational. We all like simple stories that suggest a causal chain to life’s events. Yet randomness is ever present.”