Telling Is Not Teaching Quotes

The commonest error of the gifted scholar, inexperienced in teaching, is to expect pupils to know what they have been told. But telling is not teaching. The expression of facts that are in one's mind is a natural impulse when one wishes others to know these facts, just as to cuddle and pat a sick child is a natural impulse. But telling a fact to a child may not cure his ignorance of it any more than patting him will cure his scarlet fever. (p. 61) ~ Edward Lee Thorndike

I want to make it clear before we begin that I think your purpose is to learn and mine is to help you to learn, or to make you learn, though I doubt either of you has to be made. I have very little interest in writing out progress reports on you, or sticking to form charts, or anything else that interferes with our basic purposes. If there is anything you want to learn and have the necessary background to handle, I'll be ready to help you whether or not it is something that formally falls among the things I'm supposed to teach you. If you don't have the background, I'll help you get it. In return, I want you to do something for me. It's been many years since I was last a tutor, so I expect you to point out to me when I fail to observe some ritual that Mr. Quince holds essential. Fair enough? ~ Alexei Panshin

It is within your power to release yourself from mortal bonds. To be free of them."
"What? I don't need to worry about the cold?"
"Nope."
"Right." She stuffed icy hands into the pockets of her jeans. "And apple strudel?"
"Mind over matter."
A reluctant smile found her face. "Well, we've already established that you can breathe for me."
"Don't underestimate yourself." Daniel smiled back briefly. "This has to do more with you than me. Try it: Tell yourself that you are not cold, not hungry, not tired."
"All right." Luce sighed. "I am not…" She'd started to mumble, disbelieving, but then she caught Daniel's eye. Daniel, who believed she could do things she never thought she was capable of, who believed that her will meant the difference between having the halo and letting it slip away. She was holding it in her hands. Proof.
Now he was telling her she had mortal needs only because she thought she did. She decided to give this crazy idea a try. She straightened her shoulders. She projected the words into the misty dusk. "I, Lucinda Price, am not cold, not hungry, not tired."
The wind blew, and the clock tower in the distance struck five-and something lifted off her so that she didn't feel depleted anymore. She felt rested, equipped for whatever the night called for, determined to succeed.
"Nice touch, Lucinda Price," Daniel said. "Five senses transcended at five o'clock."
She reached for his wing, wrapped herself in it, let i ~ Lauren Kate

There are little details in everything you do, and if you get away from any one of the little details, you're not teaching the thing as a whole. For it is little things which, together, make the whole. This, I think, is extremely important. ~ John Wooden

While the happy couple are enjoying the thrill of the rose garden, the in-laws are saying that they are just not right for each other. We keep telling them that they cannot pay couples to stay together, and it is clear that it will take more than a three-quid-a-week tax break to keep this marriage together. ~ Harriet Harman

Everyone who remembers his own education remembers teachers, not methods and techniques. The teacher is the heart of the educational system. ~ Sidney Hook

I am overwhelmed by an irresistible temptation to do my climb by moonlight and unroped. This is contrary to all my rock climbing teaching & does not mean poor training, but only a strong-headedness. ~ William Shockley

I think what makes us human is those choices - whether to tell the truth or not. ~ Ricky Gervais

If you think that leadership is deciding what you want and telling people to do it, I feel sorry for you. Reality is going kick your ass so far that not even Google will find you. The goal of this chapter is to help you become such a great leader that you'll appear on the first page of a Google search for leader. ~ Guy Kawasaki

I have a feeling that art is something you do for yourself, and that any time you turn your decisions over to someone else you're postponing at best, your own development. The atmosphere of the workshop should be that of trying out one's own work and accepting the signals from others but not accepting the dictation of others because that is a violation of the spirit of art. Art can't be done by somebody else, it has got to be done by the artist. ~ William Stafford

Stop your complaining, stop your doctoring; this tumult has arisen and is direct from above, and it will not cease till it makes all the adversaries of the Word like the mud on the streets. But it is sad to have to remind a theologian like you of these things, as if you were a pupil instead of one who ought to be teaching others. ~ Martin Luther

I haven't re-read Kafka for forty years. I had a second read-through when first teaching English at the University of Warwick in the 1970s, but since then have not been tempted to return. The reason for this, I suspect, is that he is a young person's writer, not in the sense that only the young can appreciate him, but because on first exposure he is so comprehensively and unexpectedly formative that you may never feel the need to read him again. He becomes part of you, and your mind and spirit and view of the human condition are inhabited by his stories, his views, and especially his characters: by poor persecuted Josef K., by Gregor Samsa trapped in his rotting shell, by the hunger artist, yearning to find something, anything, that is actually good to eat, by poor K., who can't get into the castle to visit the Authorities. Kafkaesque: a world incomprehensible, alienating and threatening, absurd. We visit it with incomprehension and at our peril, lost at all points, disorientated, inoculated against faith, searchers for meaning in a book - and universe that either has none, or in which it lurks inaccessibly. Once you have read Kafka, you know this. ~ Rick Gekoski

Now, I think our prophet today is telling all of us, in this day and time, to go and bring in those people who are out on the plains. Each worthy young man should go on a mission. And each one of us, though we may not be called to active missionary service, can be on a mission and be involved in a cause that is greater than we are, the greatest cause of all in the world: the salvation of each of our Father's children. ~ James E. Faust

Who better to teach than the most capable among us? And I'm not just talking about seminars or formal settings. Our actions and behaviors, for better or worse, teach those who admire and look up to us how to govern their own lives. Are we thoughtful about how people learn and grow? As leaders, we should think of ourselves as teachers and try to create companies in which teaching is seen as a valued way to contribute to the success of the whole. Do we think of most activities as teaching opportunities and experiences as ways of learning? One of the most crucial responsibilities of leadership is creating a culture that rewards those who lift not just our stock prices but our aspirations as well. ~ Ed Catmull

Told you," said Mick. "Things comin' together. We set off lookin' for the Utz kids an' find a tree full o' everybody. That's magic, too."
"It's like a story."
"Same thing. The universe don't like plot. Story is magic's way o' telling the universe to sod off."
"That's good then, right?" said Scott. After this episode with Emily, he was ready for some optimism. "Magic wants us all to live happily ever after."
"Not necessarily," Mick answered. "Magic likes a good tragedy, too. ~ Adam Rex

I follow the course marked out by my principles and, what is more, enjoy a deep and noble pleasure in following it. You deeply despise the human race, at least our part of it; you think it not only fallen but incapable of ever rising again ... For my part, as I feel neither the right nor the wish to entertain such opinions of my species and my country, I think it is not necessary to despair of them. In my opinion, human societies, like individuals, amount to something only in liberty ... And God forbid that my mind should ever be crossed by the thought that it is necessary to despair of success ... You will allow me to have less confidence in your teaching than in the goodness and justice of God. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

that simply teaching doctrine or preaching on a matter does not equate to actual ministry. Further engagement is required. ~ Mark A. Yarhouse

What do you and Chris even talk about?" he asks. "You have nothing in common."
"What do we talk about?" I counter.
Peter laughs. "Point taken." He pushes away from the wall and puts his head in my lap, and I go completely still.
I try to make my voice sound normal as I say, "You're in a really strange mood today."
He raises an eyebrow at me. "What kind of mood am I in?" Peter sure loves to hear about himself. Normally, I don't mind, but today I'm not in the mood to oblige him. He already has too many people in his life telling him how great he is.
"The obnoxious kind," I say, and he laughs.
"I'm sleepy." He closes his eyes and snuggles against me. "Tell me a bedtime story, Covey."
"Don't flirt," I tell him.
His eyes fly open. "I wasn't!"
"Yes, you were. You flirt with everyone. It's like you can't help yourself."
"Well, I don't ever flirt with you." Peter sits back up and checks his phone, and suddenly I'm wishing I didn't say anything at all. ~ Jenny Han

For years, right wing outlets like outlets like Fox News and talk radio have been telling their audience day after day that any information coming from outside of conservative media is not to be trusted. ~ Chris Hayes

Varium et mutabile! murmurs the man sagely - "A woman's privilege is to change her mind!" If the nature of his industry were such that he had to change his mind from cooking to cleaning, from cleaning to sewing, from sewing to nursing, from nursing to teaching, and so, backward, forward, crosswise and over again, from morning to night - he too would become adept in the lightning-change act. The man adopts one business and follows it. He develops special ability, on long lines, in connection with wide interests - and so grows broader and steadier. The distinction is there, but it is not a distinction of sex. This is why the man forgets to mail the letter. He is used to one consecutive train of thought and action. She, used to a varying zigzag horde of little things, can readily accommodate a few more. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The matron glanced at the old man and suppressed a smile. "He is absolutely miserable."
"I enjoy miserable. It gives one a contrast to all the delectabilities of life. But is he housebroken, inpala? He is rather rumpled. He will look well on my ship, but will he wash well? Do professors fray as a general rule? I will not have my ship looking ragged."
"They do tend to fade after a few years of hard use. ~ Michelle Franklin

To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

People use democracy as a free-floating abstraction disconnected from reality. Democracy in and of itself is not necessarily good. Gang rape, after all, is democracy in action.
All men have the right to live their own life. Democracy must be rooted in a rational philosophy that first and foremost recognizes the right of an individual. A few million Imperial Order men screaming for the lives of a much smaller number of people in the New World may win a democratic vote, but it does not give them the right to those lives, or make their calls for such killing right.
Democracy is not a synonym for justice or for freedom. Democracy is not a sacred right sanctifying mob rule. Democracy is a principle that is subordinate to the inalienable rights of the individual. ~ Terry Goodkind

My instinct was always have your gun in your hand. Especially when you are telling somebody to do something.
But, in fact, the police academy discourages this. They feel your gun should rarely, if ever, be brought out of its holster. Most certainly not when children are involved, which is exactly when I saw myself using my gun most often. A truant teenager loitering outside a movie theater is going to be far more motivated to return to school when he has the barrel of a .45 pressed against his cheek. ~ Augusten Burroughs

I'm not a purist. Coffee drinking minus cream and sugar is an acquired taste. I'm still not sure it isn't like telling chefs to dispense with spices in cooking. ~ Kevin Sinnott

We all wear masks
to veil the truth.
Truth is nakedness.
Truth is fear.
Truth is the gardener
making you sit on
his lap
asking you to
light his cigarette.
Truth is father -
with a limp cigarette on his lips
- telling you to never
use his matches
to light it for him.
Truth is father
yelling:
"It is not
nice for little girls
to do so".
Truth is a curious girl
wanting to
ignite a match
like a woman.
Truth is the maid watching
from the kitchen,
knowing.
But knowing isn't truth.
Truth is the maid calling:
Come. Come.
Truth is the gardener understanding.
But understanding isn't truth.
Truth is the maid saying,
"Stay away!"
Truth is a girl thinking
she is in control.
That nothing happened,
nothing bad.
But the truest truth
is a girl knowing,
a girl understanding that
on that day
someone stole
a little piece of her
truth. ~ Kamand Kojouri

My friend, when a man has anything to tell in this world, the difficulty is not to make him tell it, but to prevent him from telling it too often. ~ George Bernard Shaw

If people use Chrome, we make less money on our service and that's fine by us because that is fair competition. I wouldn't put Google on a pedestal for competition, but they aren't telling users not to use OpenDNS. ~ David Ulevitch

So I'm telling you, Kami, I won't miss you anymore. I won't hurt for you. I won't need you like I do. And I won't love you. Loving you is what caused all this. It's what ruined us. And I am so sorry for that. I hate myself for failing you. For not being enough to save you. But I won't fail you again. If this is what you need - for me to never think of you again - then that is what I am going to do. I'll forget you. I'll stop loving you like I do. Because, dammit, I do. So much it fucking tears me apart.I hope this is what you want. I know I didn't get it right the first time, but I promise to try like hell to make it better.Always (Never) ~ S.L. Jennings

Hullo!" said Merry. "So that's what is bothering you? Now, Pippin my lad, don't forget Gildor's saying - the one Sam used to quote: Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger."
"But our whole life for months has been one long meddling in the affairs of Wizards," said Pippin. "I should like a bit of information as well as danger. I should like a look at that ball."
"Go to sleep!" said Merry. "You'll get information enough, sooner or later. My dear Pippin, no Took ever beat a Brandybuck for inquisitiveness; but is it this time, I ask you?"
"All right! What's the harm in my telling you what I should like: a look at that stone? I know I can't have it, with old Gandalf sitting on it, like a hen on an egg. But it doesn't help much to get no more from you than a you-can't-have-it-so-go-to-sleep!"
"Well, what else could I say?" said Merry. "I'm sorry, Pippin, but you really must wait till the morning. I'll be as curious as you like after breakfast, and I'll help you in any way I can at wizard-wheedling. But I can't keep awake any longer. If I yawn any more, I shall split at the ears. Good night! ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Nonchoices are choices, too. And they are very telling choices at that. Each nonaction denotes a parallel action; each nonchoice, a parallel choice; each absence, a presence. Take the well-known default effect: more often than not, we stick to default options and don't expend the energy to change, even if another option is in fact better for us. We don't choose to contribute to a retirement fund - even if our company will match the contributions - unless the default is set up for contributing. We don't become organ donors unless we are by default considered donors. And the list goes on. It's simply easier to do nothing. But that doesn't mean we've actually not done anything. We have. We've chosen, in a ~ Anonymous

Dear Dan, I recently attended one of your lectures, and I was wondering why an Israeli guy telling Jewish jokes is wearing an Indian shirt?
D.A.: In general I am not someone who should be asked for fashion advice, but this particular case might be the one exception ... My solution? I figured that as long as I am wearing clothes from a different culture, no one is politically correct (and this includes almost everyone in the United States ) could complain that I'm underdressed. After all, any such critic could be offending a whole subcontinent. ~ Dan Ariely

And I could test myself - my own courage - with it, too, because when the doors at either end of the secret staircase were closed, it was impenetrably dark. I hid in the staircase, shivering with terror, telling the narrative: The little girl was in a dark, dark place but she was very brave ... Sometimes the door at the bottom opened, and a wedge of light sliced up the stairs; a maid, her arms filled with folded laundry, would find me and ask in amazement what I was doing there.
And though I answered lightheartedly that I was playing, the truth is that I was not entirely certain what I was doing there, crouched and frightened in the darkness. Only now, sixty years later, do I see that I was arming myself, rehearsing panic, loss, and helplessness; assessing my own cowardice and courage, and and the same time reassuring myself that the door would always open, that the light would always find its way in. ~ Lois Lowry

Whatever you're not telling me, let it go. Emotion leads to poor decisions. Poor decisions lead to scrutiny. Scrutiny is our greatest threat. ~ Ken Cruickshank

There is no list of rules. There is one rule. The rule is: there are no rules. Happiness comes from living as you need to, as you want to. As your inner voice tells you to. Happiness comes from being who you actually are instead of who you think you are supposed to be. Being traditional is not traditional anymore. It's funny that we still think of it that way. Normalize your lives, people. You don't want a baby? Don't have one. I don't want to get married? I won't. You want to live alone? Enjoy it. You want to love someone? Love someone. Don't apologize. Don't explain. Don't ever feel less than. When you feel the need to apologize or explain who you are, it means the voice in your head is telling you the wrong story. Wipe the slate clean. And rewrite it. No fairy tales. Be your own narrator. And go for a happy ending. One foot in front of the other. You will make it. ~ Shonda Rhimes

Write, if you must; not otherwise. Do not write, if you can earn a fair living at teaching or dressmaking, at electricity or hod-carrying. Make shoes, weed cabbages, survey land, keep house, make ice-cream, sell cake, climb a telephone pole. Nay, be a lightning-rod peddler or a book agent, before you set your heart upon it that you shall write for a living ... Living? It is more likely to be dying by your pen; despairing by your pen; burying hope and heart and youth and courage in your ink-stand. ~ Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

The loudness of tone in Jane Eyre is undoubtedly effective in communicating tension and frustration, but the style does of course have its related limitations. It precludes the use of the small suggestive detail or the quiet but telling observation that Mrs Gaskell and George Eliot are so good at. In such a fortissimo performance
as this, the pianissimo gets drowned out, or noted only as an incongruity (which helps to account for the book's moments of unintended comic bathos). Again, it makes the whole question of modulation of tone a difficult one,6 and it is also hard to manage irony elegantly, as the Brocklehurst and Ingram portraits show.
There is unconscious ambiguity but little deliberate irony in Jane Eyre. Hence the remarkable unity of critical interpretation of the book - the reader knows all too well what he is meant to think about the heroine and the subsidiary characters. The novel does not merely request our judicious sympathy for the heroine, it demands
that we see with her eyes, think in her terms, and hate her enemies, not just intermittently (as in David Copperfield) but in toto. It was, incidentally, because James Joyce recognised the similar tendency of Stephen Hero that he reshaped his autobiographical material as A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, retaining the 'first-person effect' but building in stylistic and structural
irony that would guard against the appearance of wholesale authorial endorsement of Stephen. ~ Ian Gregor

Bills upon Spain?" asked the disturbed host. "Bills upon his Majesty's private treasury," answered d'Artagnan, who, reckoning upon entering into the king's service in consequence of this recommendation, believed he could make this somewhat hazardous reply without telling of a falsehood. "The devil!" cried the host, at his wit's end. "But it's of no importance," continued d'Artagnan, with natural assurance; "it's of no importance. The money is nothing; that letter was everything. I would rather have lost a thousand pistoles than have lost it." He would not have risked more if he had said twenty thousand; but a certain juvenile modesty restrained him. A ray of light all at once broke upon the mind of the host as he was giving himself to the devil upon finding nothing. "That letter is not lost!" cried he. "What!" cried d'Artagnan. ~ Alexandre Dumas

I was just sitting in Target, just getting over my cold. I blew my nose and I see these people looking at me and kind of whispering and pointing. Finally, I went, 'Is everything okay? Did I do something wrong? Do I have a booger on my face and no one's telling me?' I'm just not used to it. ~ Atticus Shaffer

My opinion is that we have, in the person of Da Free John, a Spiritual Master and religious genius of the ultimate degree. I assure you I do not mean that lightly. I am not tossing out high-powered phrases to 'hype' the works of Da Free John. I am simply offering to you my own considered opinion: Da Free John's teaching is, I believe, unsurpassed by that of any other spiritual Hero, of any period, of any place, of any time, of any persuasion. ~ Adi Da

You see, my Lord Archbishop, what is "dubious" about my theology is not that it contradicts particular doctrinal teachings, things are much worse or better: what I want, is no more and no less than a fundamental change in the whole way that theology is done today; but I want this out of faith, not out of faithlessness. ~ Eugen Drewermann

I'll never accept that I'm a sex symbol. That will mean that someone is a bit too fond of himself. If it happens, I think it's certainly going to be odd. People shouldn't see me as a sex symbol. I'm really just Henry. I'm just telling a story. I could be playing an incredibly unpleasant character who's not sexually attractive at all in my next movie. So I've no expectations at all. ~ Henry Cavill

Telling the truth ... is not solely a matter of moral character; it is also a matter of correct appreciation of real situations and of serious reflection upon them. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I'm not [a Buddhist]. The whole point of anything that is really, truly valuable to your soul, and your own growth, is not to attach to a teacher, but rather to find out what the real deal is in the world itself. You become your own guide. The teachings can help you, but really, we're all here with the opportunity the reality of hereness. We all have that. I trust that ... I'm just not interested in labels. I find all of them constrictive. They're hard to wear. And they're hard to wear because we're always - hopefully - growing. ~ Alice Walker

Did it fall out?" Leo asked. "Is she bald?"
"No, not at all. It's just that her hair is...green."
To look at Leo's face, one would think it was Christmas morning. "What shade of green?"
"Leo, hush," Win said urgently. "You are not to torment her. It's been a very trying experience. We mixed a peroxide paste to take the green out, and I don't know if it worked or not. Amelia was helping her to wash it a little while ago. And no matter what the result is, you are to say nothing."
"You're telling me that tonight, Marks will be sitting at the supper table with hair that matches the asparagus, and I'm not supposed to remark on it?" He snorted. "I'm not that strong."
"Please, Leo," Poppy murmured, touching his arm. "If it were one of your sisters, you wouldn't mock."
"Do you think that little shrew would have any mercy on me, were the situations reversed?" He rolled his eyes as he saw their expressions. "Very well, I'll try no to jeer. But I make no promises."
Leo sauntered toward the house in no apparent hurry. He didn't deceive either of his sisters.
"How long do you think it will take him to find her?" Poppy asked Win.
"Two, perhaps three minutes," Win replied, and they both sighed. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Such a principled disregard of ad hominem evidence is a characteristically modern prejudice of professional philosophers. For most Greek and Roman thinkers from Plato to Augustine, theorizing was but one mode of living life philosophically. To Socrates and the countless classical philosophers who tried to follow in his footsteps, the primary point was not to ratify a certain set of propositions (even when the ability to define terms and analyze arguments was a constitutive component of a school's teaching), but rather to explore 'the kind of person, the sort of self' that one could elaborate as a result of taking the quest for wisdom seriously. ~ James Miller