George Leonard
George Leonard
George Burr Leonardwas an American writer, editor, and educator who wrote extensively about education and human potential. He was President Emeritus of the Esalen Institute, past-president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology, President of ITP International, and a former editor of Look Magazine. He was a former United States Army Air Corps pilot, and held a fifth degree black belt in aikido...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionLawyer
Date of Birth3 July 1729
CountryUnited States of America
Even without comparing ourselves to the world's greatest, we set such high standards for ourselves that neither we nor anyone else could ever meet them-and nothing is more destructive to creativity than this. We fail to realize that mastery is not about perfection. It's about a process, a journey. The master is the one who stays on the path day after day, year after year. The master is the one who is willing to try, and fail, and try again, for as long as he or she lives.
At the root of all power and motion, at the burning center of existence itself, there is music and rhythm.
Not to dream more boldly may turn out to be, in view of present realities, simply irresponsible.
At the root of all power and motion, there is music and rhythm, the play of patterned frequencies against the matrix of time, Before we make music, music makes us.
History tells us more than we want to know about what is wrong with man, and we can hardly turn a page in the daily press without learning the specific time, place, and name of evil. But perhaps the most pervasive evil of all rarely appears in the news. This evil, the waste of human potential, is particularly painful to recognize for it strikes our parents and children, our friends and brothers, ourselves.
To love the plateau is to love what is most essential and enduring in your life.
To learn is to change.
Of what is the body made? It is made of emptiness and rhythm. At the ultimate heart of the body, at the heart of the world, there is no solidity. Once again, there is only the dance.
Keep practicing, even when you seem to be getting nowhere.
The subtle dance of the body joins us to the world.
What if you're practicing wrong? Then you get very good at doing something wrong.
There is a human striving for self-transcendence. It's part of what makes us human. With all of our flaws we want to go a little bit further than we've gone before and maybe even further than anyone else has gone before.
Preventing the new generation from changing in any deep way is what most societies require of their educators.
Practice is the path of mastery.