“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: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

“Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher.”
― Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life

“Our deepest calling is to grow into our own authentic self-hood, whether or not it conforms to some image of who we ought to be. As we do so, we will not only find the joy that every human being seeks–we will also find our path of authentic service in the world.”
― Parker Palmer

“Self-care is never a selfish act – it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer others. Anytime we can listen to true self and give the care it requires, we do it not only for ourselves, but for the many others whose lives we touch.”
― Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

“Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent.”
― Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

“By choosing integrity, I become more whole, but wholeness does not mean perfection. It means becoming more real by acknowledging the whole of who I am.”
― Parker J. Palmer, The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life

“If we want to grow as teachers — we must do something alien to academic culture: we must talk to each other about our inner lives — risky stuff in a profession that fears the personal and seeks safety in the technical, the distant, the abstract.”
― Parker J. Palmer, The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life

“The deeper our faith, the more doubt we must endure; the deeper our hope, the more prone we are to despair; the deeper our love, the more pain its loss will bring: these are a few of the paradoxes we must hold as human beings. If we refuse to hold them in the hopes of living without doubt, despair, and pain, we also find ourselves living without faith, hope, and love.”
― Parker J. Palmer

“As I teach, I project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject, and our way of being together.”
― Parker J. Palmer, The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life

“We need a coat with two pockets. In one pocket there is dust, and in the other pocket there is gold. We need a coat with two pockets to remind us who we are.”
― Parker Palmer

“Wholeness does not mean perfection; it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life”

“The soul speaks its truth only under quiet, inviting, and trustworthy conditions.”
― Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

“I want my inner truth to be the plumb line for the choices I make about my life – about the work that I do and how I do it, about the relationships I enter into and how I conduct them.”
― Parker Palmer

“It took me a long time to understand that although everyone needs to be loved, I cannot be the source of that gift to everyone who asks me for it. There are some relationships that I am capable of love and others in which I am not. To pretend otherwise, to put out promissory notes I am unable to honor, is to damage my own integrity and that of the person in need – all in the name of love.”
― Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

“Mentors and apprentices are partners in an ancient human dance, and one of teaching’s great rewards is the daily chance it gives us to get back on the dance floor. It is the dance of the spiraling generations, in which the old empower the young with their experience and the young empower the old with new life, reweaving the fabric of the human community as they touch and turn.”
― Parker J. Palmer