Parker J. Palmer Quotes About Vocation

Quotes about: Vocation

• Vocation does not come from willfulness. It comes from listening. I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about-quite apart from what I would like it to be about-or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions…..Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am. I must listen for the truths and values at the heart of my own identity, not the standards by which I must live-but the standards by which I cannot help but live if I am living my own life.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Real, Heart, Who I Am

  Parker J. Palmer (2015). “Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation”, p.13, John Wiley & Sons

• Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Life, Work, Who I Am

  Parker J. Palmer (1999). “Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation”, p.4, John Wiley & Sons

• Leadership is a concept we often resist. It seems immodest, even self-aggrandizing, to think of ourselves as leaders. But if it is true that we are part of a community, then leadership is everyone's vocation, and it can be an evasion to insist that it is not. When we live in the close-knit ecosystem called community, everyone follows and everyone leads.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Thinking, Self, Ecosystems

• In a culture of technique, we often confuse authority with power, but the two are not the same. Power works from the outside in, but authority works from the inside out. . . . I am painfully aware of the times in my own teaching when I lose touch with my inner teacher and therefore with my own authority. In those times I try to gain power by barricading myself behind the podium and my status while wielding the threat of grades. . . . Authority comes as I reclaim my identity and integrity, remembering my selfhood and my sense of vocation.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teacher, Integrity, Teaching

• Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already posses.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Mean, Self, Treasure

  Parker J. Palmer (1999). “Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation”, p.10, John Wiley & Sons

• Here, I think, is another clue to finding true self and vocation: we must withdraw the negative projections we make on people and situations - projections that serve mainly to mask our fears about ourselves- and acknowledge and embrace our own liabilities and limits.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Thinking, Self, People

  Parker J. Palmer (1999). “Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation”, p.29, John Wiley & Sons

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