# Quote — Pat Conroy, The Lords of Discipline

> I developed The Great Teacher theory late in my freshman year. It was a cornerstone of the theory that great teachers had great personalities and that the greatest teachers had outrageous personalities. I did not like decorum or rectitude in a classroom; I preferred a highly oxygenated atmosphere, a climate of intemperance, rhetoric, and feverish melodrama. And I wanted my teachers to make me smart. A great teacher is my adversary, my conqueror, commissioned to chastise me. He leaves me tame and grateful for the new language he has purloined from other kings whose granaries are filled and whose libraries are famous. He tells me that teaching is the art of theft; knowing what to steal and from whom.

- Author: [Pat Conroy](https://www.leafyquotes.com/pat-conroy.md)
- Book: [The Lords of Discipline](https://www.leafyquotes.com/pat-conroy/the-lords-of-discipline.md)
- Page: 271
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pat_Conroy#The_Lords_of_Discipline_(1980)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/pat-conroy/the-lords-of-discipline/i-developed-the

## More from this book

> Bad teachers do not touch me; the great ones never leave me. They ride with me during all my days, and I pass on to others what they have imparted to me. I exchange their handy gifts with strangers on trains, and I pretend the gifts are mine. I steal from the great teachers. And the truly wonderful thing about them is that they would applaud my theft, laugh at the thought of it, realizing that they had taught me their larcenous skills well.

p. 271 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/pat-conroy/the-lords-of-discipline/bad-teachers-do-not.md)

> The drums ceased and the parade ground was as silent as an inland sea. At the other end of the parade ground, I heard Gauldin Grace's harsh, overextended voice screaming out the findings of the honor court. "Gentlemen, the honor court has met tonight and has found Pignetti, D.A., Company R, guilty of the honor code violation of stealing. His name will never be spoken by any man from Carolina Military Institute. He will never return to the campus so long as he may live. His name and memory are anathema to anyone who aspires to wear the ring. Let him go from us and never be heard from again. Let him begin the Walk of Shame."

p. 439 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/pat-conroy/the-lords-of-discipline/the-drums-ceased.md)

> "I didn't get the point," said Pig. "That's because you've got four pounds of provolone where most people got brains!" Mark shouted, shaking his fist. "This is college, you dumb bastard. This is a place where you're supposed to argue and learn and get pissed off. You don't go around choking your buddies just because they don't happen to believe what you believe."

p. 88 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/pat-conroy/the-lords-of-discipline/i-didnt-get.md)