Quotes from Parker Palmer

We are a profoundly interconnected species, as the global economic and ecological crises reveal in vivid and frightening detail. We must embrace the simple fact that we are dependent on and accountable to one another.

Fascist movements kill off their critics, literally or metaphorically, while democratic movements value, invite and even welcome criticism.

Inner-life questions are the kind everyone asks, with or without benefit of God-talk: 'Does my life have meaning and purpose?' 'Do I have gifts that the world wants and needs?' 'Whom and what shall I serve?' 'Whom and what can I trust?' 'How can I rise above my fears?'

Whatever America's founders believed about Christianity - and they believed a wide range of things - they clearly rejected the idea of an established church.

Even when life challenges us, it's a gift beyond all measure.

Whether we're Democrats or Republicans or independents, we have to learn to hang together or we're gonna hang separately.

Every religious tradition is rooted in mysteries I don't pretend to understand, including claims about what happens after we die. But this I know for sure: as long as we're alive, choosing resurrection is always worth the risk.

As a Christian, I'm passionately opposed to American pretensions that we have special standing with God; to political office-seekers who play on our religious differences; and to the religious arrogance that says, 'Our truth is the only truth.'

I think the pursuit of happiness is the pursuit of reality because illusion never leaves us ultimately happy.

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.

Humility is the only lens though which great things can be seen--and once we have seen them, humility is the only posture possible.

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.