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Quote... unquote Darryl Wideman, Head, Radnor House Twickenham
Quote… Unquote
Darryl Wideman, Head of Radnor House Twickenham, shares his collection of favourite quotations
The BBC Radio Four programme Quote… Unquote has been running since 1976 and there have been nearly 500 episodes, all of them hosted by Nigel Rees. While some people think it is the best programme on the radio, others find it less palatable, so its overall reputation has something of a Marmite quality about it. However, regardless of how one might feel about Mr Rees and his show, there is no doubt that quotations play a significant role in the world of education.
Some schools have them as their mottos or straplines. They feature every day as part of the curriculum in English and Humanities classrooms, and it must be almost impossible to visit a school and not find a quotation or several on display in corridors, libraries and work areas. Colleagues send them to each other, and I do not think I have ever led a staff training day without someone else’s wisdom featuring at the start or the end.
I have accumulated about 40 pages of quotations over the years. I must have somewhere in the region of 600 succinctly expressed ideas, but before now, I have never tried to narrow my selection to my favourites. Another Radio Four staple — Desert Island Discs — limits its castaways to eight chosen records. I could not bring myself to go quite so far, but I have reduced my list to just under 20 and tried to group them where I can.
Soon after becoming a head teacher, I attended an inspirational training session with Sir John Jones, who started with Maya Angelou’s words: “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what
Mark Twain
you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” If you think back to your own school days and remember your favourite teacher, I am sure you will be able to relate to this.
Most aspects of senior leadership involve problem solving. Sometimes you have the satisfaction of tackling an issue once and for all, but I am often reminded of US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, after whom the airport in Washington DC is named: “The measure of success is not whether you have a
tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year.”
If you are trying to implement change, consultation is always useful, though it is good to recall Henry Ford’s reflection on the introduction of the Model T and his rejection of the need for market research: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” Likewise, it helps to have a good team around you, as Ronald Reagan pointed out: “Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority and don’t interfere.” But you will not always get your way, so remember George Bernard Shaw’s wise advice: “Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, but the pig enjoys it.”
Churchill and Einstein probably have the most quotations in my collection, but Winston did not make the final cut, with Albert pipping him to the post with something I find myself saying a lot: “The definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Another scientist,
Isaac Newton, in his First Law of Motion, wrote: “A body will remain in a state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an impressed force,” helping leaders to remember that nothing is likely to happen unless they start things moving.
Machiavelli probably does not set the right tone for a piece like this, with his overly cynical views about the perils of introducing change, so instead I will turn to my favourite author, Yuval Noah Harari, and his rather more reflective view: “People are usually afraid of change because they fear the unknown. But the single greatest constant of history is that everything changes.” We do not need to fear change, as highlighted by American polymath Daniel Levitin: “My own experience is that when I've lost something I thought was irreplaceable, it's usually replaced with something much better. The key to change is having faith that when we get rid of the old, something or someone even more magnificent will take its place.”
If you are going to persuade people to change, you also have to motivate them to be willing to take on new challenges. John F. Kennedy’s speech at Rice University in 1962 could prove useful: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade not because it is easy, but because it is hard, because that goal will serve to organise and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win.” Or how about the often-inspirational French genius Antoine de Saint-Exupery: “If you want to build a ship then don’t drum up men to gather wood, give orders and divide the work. Rather, teach them to yearn for the far and endless sea.”
Staying with a nautical theme, perhaps my favourite quotation, if you can ever have such a thing, is Mark Twain’s exhortation to live life to the full: “20 years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So, throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
We may sometimes need to remember why we became school leaders in the first place and to question what it is all about. I like the
George Bernard Shaw
words of Hannah Holborn Gray, the American historian and university leader: “Education should not be intended to make people comfortable; it is meant to make them think.” More flippantly, but always worth including in a speech or an assembly, are the thoughts of the first headmaster of Stowe School, J.F Roxburgh: “The ideal pupil will be useful at a dance and indispensable in a shipwreck.”
Will it all be worth the effort? My response would categorically be yes. The Athenian general and statesman Pericles might inspire us to think about the right legacy, particularly at a time when statues are so out of favour: “What you leave behind is not what is engraved on stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”
Whatever you are trying to achieve, do not forget Sitting Bull, who wisely pointed out: “You learn by experience, but mistakes teach you wisdom.” If you want to make real progress, try not to overcomplicate things, as witnessed by Spencer Tracy’s: “How to be a great actor? Learn your lines and don’t bump into the furniture.”
I hope you have enjoyed this eclectic mix of other people’s wisdom. If your collection has different words from the same people or the same words from different people, it does not matter. Reading is helpful but actions almost always speak louder than words, so I will end with Thomas à Kempis: “On the Day of Judgement we shall not be asked what we have read, but what we have done.” n
