A leader is a person who must take special responsibility for what's going on inside of himself or herself ... lest the act of leadership create more harm than good.

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.

Violence is what happens when we don't know what else to do with our suffering.

What passes for political realism may make for lively academic debates. But it often functions, ironically, as a tool of social control, rendering us passive with an analysis that overwhelms and paralyzes us.

When you are with young people, it is almost inconceivable that things wouldn't arise that you'd have to respond to, such as someone wrestling on the bus. And how you handle that, how you respond to that, how you deal with that is a lesson to the people you are on the bus with.

Good teachers join self and subject and students in the fabric of life.

We are exploring together. We are cultivating a garden together, backs to the sun. The question is a hoe in our hands and we are digging beneath the hard and crusty surface to the rich humus of our lives.