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Faith & Learning Initiative
A Service of the BYU Faculty Center

Quotes

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Quotes

Scott Sommerfeldt

I think there are two extremes you can go to here. We can easily get the one [extreme] where everything is just like any other university. It’s very rigorous: 'Here’s the facts, here’s how it works, learn it and that’s it....'
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Quotes

James Faulconer

Teaching means asking myself what matters. It means asking myself how to help students know what matters. More than anything else, it means remembering that in my experience character has always mattered more than content....
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Quotes

Kevin J. Worthen

I hope we inspire our students to learn. And I hope that learning leads to inspiration. When both things happen, inspiring learning occurs, and we can then know we are on the right track to achieve the core goals set forth in our mission statement.
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Quotes

Kevin J. Worthen

It is not enough to offer—or even require—our students to take courses in religious education. If the only insights that students receive on gospel truths are in their religion classes, we will not be that different from other good universities....
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Quotes

Kevin J. Worthen

Become more familiar with the mission statement [and Aims of a BYU Education documents]. ... I urge each of you to read it and to reread it, even if you have read it many times before....
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Quotes

Kevin J. Worthen

The direction of Brigham Young University is firmly set. It is clearly stated in our mission statement. We are 'to assist individuals in their quest for perfection and eternal life.....'
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Quotes

Kevin J. Worthen

Each of us ... are to put forth our ability to learn as fast as we can, and gather all the strength of mind and principle of faith we possibly can, and then distribute our knowledge to the people....
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Quotes

Tom Sederberg

Brigham Young’s instruction to Karl G. Maeser was, 'Remember to not teach even the alphabet or the multiplication tables without the Spirit of God.' He did not say to always draw in gospel principles when teaching these secular topics....
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Quotes

L. Tom Perry

If we provide a spiritual foundation for our secular learning, not only will we better understand the laws of nature, but we can gain a depth of understanding never before imagined possible...
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Quotes

Kent Blad

I find the students love to be challenged. Too often we think that we have to hold their hand for them to have a good experience, but they love to be challenged and to have somebody expect a lot out of them....
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Quotes

Jeffrey R. Holland

The ennobling climb toward an Everest allows us—indeed requires us—to take the high ground, gives us a place to view the broader, more liberating, more eternal ‘general' education...
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Quotes

Douglas Prawitt

We have to be striving to be the people that we need to be, and then we just need to love our students, and you can’t fake that. Either you do or you don’t....
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Quotes

Kevin Kelly

I [tell] students, 'Maybe there’s a chance somewhere in your life where you’re going to take what you learn here and you’re going to give back to the Church....
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Quotes

Kevin J. Worthen

The end of all we do... is to encourage and prepare young men and women to rise to their full spiritual potential as sons and daughters of God...
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Quotes

Mark Butler

You can’t serve them if you don’t know them. So that means no matter how large the class, we have to know who we’re talking to. Various professors approach that in various ways....
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Quotes

Jeffrey R. Holland

I am making an unabashed appeal for a distinctly LDS approach to education. ... [As] one faculty member recently wrote me saying, 'We need—without arrogance but with energy and daring—to try [to] integrate faith and scholarship in our writing and in our teaching...
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Quotes

Ryan Woodward

Maybe one of my real purposes as a teacher is not necessarily to teach the process of animation, but the principles behind a successful career in animation. … And so I started sharing experiences with the students....
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Quotes

Jeffrey R. Holland

Defending the faith intelligently is only one kind of aid we might offer our far-flung brothers and sisters, albeit surely the most important one.
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Quotes

Jean Applonie

Here is what teaching through the Spirit feels like to me. My perspective comes from many years working with choirs. It may look different [for] different people; the means to the end may be different; but the result is the same....
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Quotes

Mark Butler

You have to have done your homework in the gospel area as well as you have in your discipline. You can’t draw from an empty well. And so what we do in our private faith and devotion is so imperative....
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Quotes

John McBride

The way I try to integrate the gospel is that at the very beginning I let the students know that I really, sincerely care about them, and I try to break down the barriers. But the point is that I show them that I care about them....
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Quotes

Jeffery Parkin

It is important to to be authentic, to share who we are. Part of that is our testimony. When someone has a testimony, they don’t need to talk about it constantly....
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Quotes

Neal A. Maxwell

In a way, LDS scholars at BYU and elsewhere are a little bit like the builders of the temple in Nauvoo who worked with a trowel in one hand and a musket in the other....
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Quotes

Spencer W. Kimball

As previous First Presidencies have said, and we say again to you, we expect (we do not simply hope) that Brigham Young University will 'become a leader among the great universities of the world....'
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Quotes

Jeffery Parkin

I sometimes get a little emotional in class. My voice breaks or I can’t talk. I try not to do that because it’s embarrassing, nonetheless it happens....
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Quotes

Ken Solen

As we walk into class, it’s important we understand that the journey the students are on, and the core principles they’re learning, are more important than any set of details....
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Quotes

Jini Roby

Our work is about caring about that individual student and seeing that individual student as Heavenly Father sees that person. To be an instrument in the lives of these individuals, to help enlighten their lives....
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