Change:

"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind is ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter into another."

- Anatole France, French Writer

"Difficulties can be a valuable tool in our pursuit of perfection.  Adversity need have no necessary connection with failure."

- Marvin J. Ashton

"The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order."

- Alfred North Whitehead

"The interval between the decay of the old and the formation and the establishment of the new constitutes a period of transition which must always necessarily be one of uncertainty, confusion, error, and wild and fierce fanaticism."The interval between the decay of the old and the formation and the establishment of the new constitues a period of transition which must always necessarliy be one of uncertainty, confusion, error, and wild and fierce fanaticism."

- John C. Calhoun, American Senator

"In times of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future.  The learned usually find themselves beautifully equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."

- Eric Hoffer

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.  Courage faces fear and thereby masters it; cowardice represses fear and is thereby mastered by it.  We must constantly build dies of courage to hold back the flood of fear.""The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.  Courage faces fear and thereby masters it; cowardice represses fear and is theereby mastered by it.  We must constantly build dies of courage to hold back the flood of fear."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Educational change is technically simple and socially complex."

- Michael Fullan

"School districts should not try to simply build a learning community that has as many definitions as there are people defining it.  The emphasis should be on restructuring how people work together.  That's what ultimately has an effect on the classroom."

- Nelda Cambron-McCabe, School Adminstrator

"The most important question in any organization has to be what is the business of our business? Answering this question is the first step in setting priorities."

- Judith Bardwick

"If we individually make the effort to ensure that each child is known in our system, our organization will be a caring learning community that knows and lifts each child."

- Les Omentani, Community School District Superintendent

"I wonder how many children's lives might be saved if we educators disclosed what we know to each other."

- Roland Barth

"The most obvious impediment to a results orientation is the failure at the beginning of the year, or as early in the year as possible, to put the data in front of the teachers, have them look at it, and then generate a manageable number of measurable goals based on the previous year's scores.  That should be job one for administrators.""The most obvious impediment to a results orientation is the failure at the beginning of the year, or as early in the year as possible, to put the data in front of the teachers, have them look at it, and then generate a manageable number of measureable goals based on the previous year's scores.  That should be job one for administrators."

- Mike Schmoker

"The research is abundantly clear: Nothing motivates a child more than when learning is valued by schools and families/community working together in partnership.... These forms of involvement do not happen by accident or even by invitation.  They happen by explicit strategic intervention."

- Michael Fullan

"It took about five years before I felt we had really turned a corner; that kids were beginning to think and say that the system was working for them.  But the process never ends.  There is no single mountain to climb.  At the top of one peak is another just beyond."

- Richard DeLorenzo, Superintendent Chugan School District, Anchorage, Alaska

"Men believe that a society is disintegrating when it can no longer be pictured in familiar terms.  Unhappy is a people that has run out of words to describe what is going on."

- Thurman Arnold, American Lawyer

"We have come out of the time when obedience, the acceptance of discipline, intelligent courage and resolution were most important into that more difficult time when it is a person's duty to understand the world rather than simply fight for it."

- Ernest Hemingway, American Writer

"Historic continuity with the past is not a duty, it is only a necessity."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes, American Physician

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few."

- Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Philosopher

"One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea."

- Walter Bagehot, English Political Scientist

"All innovations worth their salt call upon people to question, and in some respects change their behavior and beliefs - even in cases where innovations are pursued voluntarily."

- Michael Fullan

Leadership:

"It is a terrible thing to look over your shoulder when you are trying to lead – and find no one there."

– Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"Management by objectives works if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don’t."

– Peter Drucker, Management Expert

"Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time."

– Mark Twain, American Writer

“Listen, Moses. You’ve got too many people reporting to you. We’re never going to get to the Promised Land if you don’t delegate some power!”

– Jethro (very loosely paraphrased)

"Where all think alike, no one thinks very much."

– Walter Lippmann, American Journalist

Education:

"Creativeness often consists of merely turning up what is already there. Did you know that right and left shoes were thought up only a little more than a century ago?"

– Bernice Fitz-Gibbon, American Writer

"The most disastrous times have produced the greatest minds.  The purest metal comes of the most ardent furnace; the most brilliant lightning come of the darkest clouds."

- Francois René Chateaubriand (1768-1848)

"Every exit is an entry somewhere else."

– Tom Stoppard, American Dramatist

"It takes nine months to have a baby, no matter how many people you put on the job."

– American Saying

Success:

"Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not a sum of what we have been but what we yearn to be."

– Jose Ortega y Gasset, Spanish Philosopher

"An era can be said to end when the basic illusions are exhausted."

– Arthur Miller, American Dramatist

"Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal."

– Friedrich Neitzsche, German Philosopher

"Every beginning is a consequence. Every beginning ends something."

– Paul Valery

"A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral."

– Antoine de Saint-Exupèry, Franch Novelist

Children:

"In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few."

– Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Philosopher

"Great is the art of beginning, but greater the art of ending."

– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American Poet

Communication:

"Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind."

– Seneca the Younger, Roman Statesman

"Hope is generally a wrong guide, though it is very good company by the way."

– Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax, British Salesman

"Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not yet understood."

– Henry Miller, American Novelist

Character:

"Many a man would rather you heard his story than granted his request."

– Phillip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield

"Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way."

– William James, American Psychologist

"Chaos often breeds life, while order breeds habit."

– Henry Adams, American Historian