We’ve all had those days where we’re behind on planning, have a thousand papers to grade, and to top it off the kids have left the classroom in a mess! It’s these days that can leave us feeling a little down in the dumps as teachers, so we’ve compiled a list of 54 quotes to help you keep that fire burning and pick yourself back up. The rebellious spirit of these quotes will help you remember why you love what you do and why it’s so important! Read on to get inspired and remember how you’re changing the world!
1. “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” – Nelson Mandela
2. “The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.” – Plutarch
3. “Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time.” – Hebrew Proverb
4. “You can never be overdressed or overeducated.” – Oscar Wilde
5. “When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That’s if you want to teach them to think.” – Bertrand Russell
6. “Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing. The rest is mere sheep-herding.” – Ezra Pound
7. “I am not a teacher, but an awakener.” – Robert Frost
8. “What we learn with pleasure we never forget.” – Alfred Mercier
9. “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
10. “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” – Margaret Mead
11. “The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence.” – Amos Bronson Alcott
12. “It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” – Albert Einstein
13. “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” – T.S. Eliot
14. “Everyone who remembers his own education remembers teachers, not methods and techniques. The teacher is the heart of the educational system.” – Sidney Hook
15. “The greatest sign of success for a teacher… is to be able to say, ‘The children are now working as if I did not exist.'” – Maria Montessori
16. “One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.” – Malala Yousafzai
17. “Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.” – Jacques Barzun
18. “Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.” – Josef Albers
19. “The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.” – C.S. Lewis
20. “The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without his teacher.” – Elbert Hubbard
21. “The best teachers are those who show you where to look but don’t tell you what to see.” – Alexandra K. Trenfor
22. “A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching.” – Gilbert K. Chesterton
23. “Teaching is the greatest act of optimism.” – Colleen Wilcox
24. “A good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination, and instill a love of learning.” – Brad Henry
25. “The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.” – Mark Van Doren
26. “I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.” – Socrates
27. “Teach the children so it will not be necessary to teach the adults.” – Abraham Lincoln
28. “Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these only gave life, those the art of living well.” – Aristotle
29. “What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches.” – Karl Menninger
30. “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” – William Butler Yeats
31. “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” – William Arthur Ward
32. “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” – Henry Adams
33. “The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.” – Cicero
34. “In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.” – Eric Hoffer
35. “Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.” – John Steinbeck
36. “If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow.” – John Dewey
37. “To teach is to learn twice.” – Joseph Joubert
38. “In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.” – Phil Collins
39. “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” – Mark Twain
40. “To this end the greatest asset of a school is the personality of the teacher.” – John Strachan
41. “The best education does not happen at a desk, but rather engaged in everyday living – hands on, exploring, in active relationship with life.” – Vince Gowmon
42. “Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher.” – Japanese Proverb
43. “The dream begins, most of the time, with a teacher who believes in you.” – Dan Rather
44. “The test of a good teacher is not how many questions he can ask his pupils that they will answer readily, but how many questions he inspires them to ask him which he finds it hard to answer.” – Alice Wellington Rollins
45. “You can’t teach anybody anything, only make them realize the answers are already inside them.” – Galileo Galilei
46. “Good teachers know how to bring out the best in students.” – Charles Kuralt
47. “Most teachers waste their time by asking questions that are intended to discover what a pupil does not know, whereas the true art of questioning is to discover what the pupil does know or is capable of knowing.” – Albert Einstein
48. “The teacher is of course an artist, but being an artist does not mean that he or she can make the profile, can shape the students. What the educator does in teaching is to make it possible for the students to become themselves.” – Paulo Freire
49. “A teacher takes a hand, opens a mind, and touches a heart.” – Unknown
50. “It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” – Albert Einstein
51. “The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.” – Khalil Gibran
52. “The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.” – Anatole France
53. “A professor is someone who talks in someone else’s sleep.” – W.H. Auden
54. “Teachers can change lives with just the right mix of chalk and challenges.” – Joyce Meyer
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