Top 558 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Teachers

The study of asana is not about mastering posture. It's about using posture to understand and transform yourself.

No thought has any power. You have power. And when you identify and believe in the thought you give power to the thought.

Worry is a prayer for something you don't want.

Life is too short not to create, not to love, and not to lend a helping hand to our brothers and sisters.

All transformation begins with an intense, burning desire to be transformed. The first step in the 'renewing of the mind' is desire. You must want to be different [and intend to be] before you can begin to change yourself. Then you must make your future dream a present fact. You do this by assuming the feeling of your wish fulfilled. By desiring to be other than what you are, you can create an ideal of the person you want to be and assume that you are already that person. If this assumption is persisted in until it becomes your dominant feeling, the attainment of your ideal is inevitable.

A considerable percentage of the people we meet on the street are people who are empty inside, that is, they are actually already dead. It is fortunate for us that we do not see and do not know it. If we knew what a number of people are actually dead and what a number of these dead people govern our lives, we should go mad with horror.

We are on a journey of becoming that which we already are. That is the impossible paradox of our lives.

You should not be carried away by the dictation of the mind, but the mind should be carried by your dictation.

Don't wait for the right conditions. All you need for your growth is available to you in this moment

It's a mistake to expect benefits from any pose. Expectations make you restless because if you fail to get what you expect, you feel miserable. Yoga practice is an act of adoration to the Lord. You do it because it has to be done. If you have this mental attitude, your selfishness disappears and the benefits come.

That's the beauty of art--we strive for perfection but never achieve it. The journey is everything.

Relax. Nothing is under control.

If I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child's natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn't possibly do as good a job as is currently being done-I simply wouldn't have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul-crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education.

Stories make it possible for us to be human.

Anyone can practice. Young man can practice. Old man can practice. Very old man can practice. Man who is sick, he can practice. Man who doesn't have strength can practice. Except lazy people; lazy people can't practice Ashtanga yoga.

The root of all desires is the one desire: to come home, to be at peace.

Inhale, and God approaches you. Hold the inhalation, and God remains with you. Exhale, and you approach God. Hold the exhalation, and surrender to God.

You can't touch love, but you can feel the sweetness that it pours into everything.

If you desire the path of sincerity, develop a love for obscurity. Flee from the clatter and clinks of fame. Be like the roots of a tree; it keeps the tree upright and gives it life, but it itself is hidden underneath the earth and eyes cannot see it.

I think it's interesting that the opposite of being active in yoga is not being passive. It's being receptive.

In an asana, the mind has to reach inside the body to find a quiet space until a point comes where perfect balance is felt.

I am not simply teaching the reading; I am teaching the reader.

Your nafs (soul/desires) is your first battlefield. If you are victorious over it, then you will find the other battlefields easier.

Play is the highest expression of human development in childhood for it alone is the free expression of what is in a child's soul.

Getting people to think about what they think, and asking them questions about it, is the best way I know how to teach.

Realization is not knowledge about the universe, but the living experience of the nature of the universe. Until we have such living experience, we remain dependent on examples, and subject to their limits.

The hardest thing is to give up something you love, for the sake of Allah. But remember Allah never takes without giving something better.

Rock music is rhythmically some of the most impoverished music the world has ever heard, a fact that is hard to square with the sophisticated technologies that produced it.

The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately 10% of the human race.

We cannot expect that millions are practicing real yoga just because millions of people claim to be doing yoga all over the globe. What has spread all over the world is not yoga. It is not even non-yoga; it is un-yoga.

Education, you know, means broadening, advancing; and if you limit a teacher to only one side of anything, the whole country will eventually have only one thought, be one individual. I believe in teaching every aspect of every problem or theory.

I often think . . . that the bookstores that will save civilization are not online, nor on campuses, nor named Borders, Barnes & Noble, Dalton, or Crown. They are the used bookstores, in which, for a couple of hundred dollars, one can still find, with some diligence, the essential books of our culture, from the Bible and Shakespeare to Plato, Augustine, and Pascal.

If someone takes something from me I’m going to grab it right back out of their cold, twisted sick hands and say it is mine! And I am going to punch you in the face and push you in the dirt because this is the teachers! These are our tools and you sick people need to deal with us and the children we teach.

When will we address the fact that rich, white people think they know what's in the best interest of children of African-Americans and Latinos - no matter what the parent's income or education level.

Look at life all around; everything is growing, everything is moving forward. Therefore I recommend keeping in touch with life and with art.

We believe that this initiative is a critical first step in our nation s effort to provide every student with a comprehensive, content rich and complete education. These standards have the potential to support teachers in achieving NEA s purpose of preparing students to thrive in a democratic society and a diverse, changing world as knowledgeable, creative and engaged citizens and lifelong learners.

People despise the lust for power that originates from a craving for homage and for the attributes of power.

All I've done is give you a book. You have to have the courage to learn what's inside it.

Uncontrolled or covert napping, however, is still probably very common. One need only move through a building surreptitiously and peek at people to find some subset of sleep at any given time.

The cause of the South was the cause of constitutional government, the cause of government regulated by law, and the cause of honesty and fidelity in public servants. No nobler cause did man ever fight for!

The primary aim of yoga is to restore the mind to simplicity, peace, and poise, to free it from confusion and distress.

When you cannot hold the body still, you cannot hold the brain still. If you do not know the silence of the body, you cannot understand the silence of the mind. Action and silence have to go together. If there is action, there must also be silence. If there is silence, there can be conscious action and not just motion.

The best way to uplift our own lives is to do all we can to uplift the lives of others.

Whatever pain and suffering you've experienced in your life has been a blessing at least in this one regard: you now know some true things that you couldn't have learned any other way.

You have to get serious about your practice!

Truth is that which, when fully realized, sets you free from all bondage and all seeking.

What you need to know is very little, but to know that little takes very very much.

Disregard appearances, conditions, in fact all evidence of your senses that deny the fulfillment of your desire. Rest in the assumption that you are already what you want to be, for in that determined assumption you and your Infinite Being are merged in creative unity, and with your Infinite Being all things are possible.

Controlling the position of one's body and keeping a straight back are not contemplation, but can in fact become an obstacle to contemplation. ...when leaving the body 'uncontrolled' is spoken of, what is meant is simply allowing the body to remain in an authentic, uncorrected condition, in which it is not necessary to modify or improve anything. This is because, since all our attempts at correcting the body come from the reasoning mind, they are all false and artificial.

You cannot become Happy, You can only Be Happy.

I always tell the kids that excellence is like pregnancy. You can't be a little bit pregnant. You either are or you're not.

It is a mistake to imagine that you can awaken in any kind of permanent way. There is only NOW and so you can only be awake now. Even the idea of permanence is an illusion. The question to ask is 'Am I awake and fully present NOW?' That question arises and is answered in perfect silence.

You can't plan in advance for everything - every mood swing, every mistake you might make in execution, every shift in your circumstances. But you can keep updating your plan.

All the ups and downs are grace in different wrappings, sent to refine consciousness. Say thanks to them all.

Life begins with an inhale and ends with an exhale. ln between that inhale and that exhale is our life.

Books are the basis; purity is the force; preaching is the essence; utility is the principle.

Faith is unflinching trust in something divine.

Duality is the real root of our suffering and of all our conflicts. All our concepts and beliefs, no matter how profound they may seem, are like nets which trap us in dualism. When we discover our limits we have to try to overcome them, untying ourselves from whatever type of religious, political, or social conviction may contain us. We have to abandon such concepts as 'enlightenment', 'the nature of the mind', and so on, until we no longer neglect to integrate our knowledge with our actual existence.

When you consciously decide to breathe more slowly and deeply, you alert your body to the fact that you want it to behave differently. You are not just changing your breathing pattern, you are making a full-body announcement that you are entering into a different relationship with your mind and your body.

The greatest untold story is the evolution of God.