These 110 inspirational quotes could lift your spirits and renew your passion for teaching! We at Teaching Expertise know that sometimes life can be tough and a little positive encouragement can make all the difference! We hope that our favorite quotes will provide you with some inspiration!
1. 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
2. By learning you will teach; by teaching you will learn. – Latin Proverb
3. Teaching is not a lost art; but regard for teaching is a lost tradition. – Jacques Barzun
4. Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one. – Malcolm Forbes
5. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. – Will Durant
6. The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery. – Mark Van Doren
7. Everything is a learning process: any time you fall over, it’s just teaching you to stand up the next time. – Joel Edgerton
8. Teaching is the royal road to learning. – Jessamyn West
9. Teaching is not a job. It’s a lifestyle. It permeates your whole life. – Jill Biden
10. Effective teaching may be the hardest job there is. – William Glasser
11. In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day’s work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years. – Jacques Barzun
12. I think the teaching profession contributes more to our society than any other single profession. – John Wooden
13. You can never be overdressed or overeducated. – Oscar Wilde
14. It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. – Aristotle
15. Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. – Nelson Mandela
16. Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation. – Walter Cronkite
17. Children must be taught how to think, not what to think. – Margaret Mead
18. Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all. – Aristotle
19. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education. – Martin Luther King, Jr.
20. Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each. – Plato
21. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.
– C.S. Lewis
22. The best teachers impart knowledge through sleight of hand, like a magician. – Kate Betts
23. To educate a person in the mind but not in morals is to educate a menace to society. – Theodore Roosevelt
24. One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world. – Malala Yousafzai
25. Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goest out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead. – Cicero
26. Knowledge will bring you the opportunity to make a difference. – Claire Fagin
27. Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. – John Dewey
28. Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace. – Confucius
29. Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. – Cesar Chavez
30. Children learn more from what you are than what you teach. – W.E.B. DuBois
31. Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon. – E.M. Forster
32. The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. – William Arthur Ward
33. What is a teacher? I’ll tell you: it isn’t someone who teaches something, but someone who inspires the student to give of her best in order to discover what she already knows. – Paulo Coelho
34. True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create their own. – Nikos Kazantzakis
35. We teach best what we most need to learn. – Richard Bach
36. I am not a teacher, but an awakener. – Robert Frost
37. A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. – Henry Adams
38. The best teacher is not the one who knows most but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge to that simple compound of the obvious and wonderful. – H.L. Mencken
39. When you study great teachers… you will learn much more from their caring and hard work than from their style. – William Glasser
40. A teacher who loves learning earns the right and the ability to help others learn. – Ruth Beechick
41. Teachers are the one and only people who save nations. – Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
42. It is not enough for the teacher to love the child. She must first love and understand the universe. She must prepare herself, and truly work at it. – Maria Montessori
43. A true teacher would never tell you what to do. But he would give you the knowledge with which you could decide what would be best for you to do. – Christopher Pike
44. The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. – Amos Bronson Alcott
45. I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework. – Lily Tomlin
46. I’m a teacher. A teacher is someone who leads. There is no magic here. I do not walk on water. I do not part the sea. I just love children. – Marva Collins
47. What all good teachers have in common, however, is that they set high standards for their students and do not settle for anything less. – Marva Collins
48. The teacher must be an actor, an artist, passionately in love with his work. – Anton Chekhov
49. The foundation of every state is the education of its youth. – Diogenes
50. Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and diligence. – Abigail Adams
51. The great aim of education is not knowledge but action. – Herbert Spencer
52. An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. – Benjamin Franklin
53. Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow. – Anthony J. D’Angelo
54. Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. – B. F. Skinner
55. Education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know. – Daniel J. Boorstin
56. A liberal education is at the heart of a civil society, and at the heart of a liberal education is the act of teaching. – A. Bartlett Giamatti
57. A good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination, and instill a love of learning. – Brad Henry
58. A good teacher, like a good entertainer first must hold his audience’s attention, then he can teach his lesson. – John Henrik Clarke
59. Good teachers know how to bring out the best in students. – Charles Kuralt
60. It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge. – Albert Einstein
61. “A teacher takes a hand, opens a mind, and touches a heart.” – Unknown
62. “The dream begins, most of the time, with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you on to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called truth.” – Dan Rather
63. “One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings.” – Carl Ju
64. “Teachers, I believe, are the most responsible and important members of society because their professional efforts affect the fate of the earth.” – Helen Caldicott
65. “Teaching is the highest form of understanding.” – Aristotle
66. “The best teacher teaches from the heart, not from the book.” – Unknown
67. “It takes a big heart to help shape little minds.” – Unknown
68. “Teachers can change lives with just the right mix of chalk and challenges.” – Joyce Meyer
69. “Education is the key to success in life, and teachers make a lasting impact in the lives of their students.” – Solomon Ortiz
70. “Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these only gave life, those the art of living well.” – Aristotle
71. “Education is not filling a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” – William Butler Yeats
72. “The best teachers are those most interested in the process, not the outcome.” – Robert John Meehan
73. “To the world you may be just a teacher, but to your students you are a hero!” – Unknown
74. “Teachers are expected to reach unattainable goals with inadequate tools. The miracle is that at times they accomplish this impossible task.” – Haim Ginott
75. “In the practice of tolerance, one’s enemy is the best teacher.” – Dalai Lama
76. “What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches.” – Karl Menninger
77. “A good teacher must be able to put himself in the place of those who find learning hard.” – Eliphas Levi
78. “The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself.” – Edward Bulwer-Lytton
79. “Teachers teach because they care. Teaching young people is what they do best. It requires long hours, patience, and care.” – Horace Mann
80. “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
81. “The good teacher makes the poor student good and the good student superior.” – Marva Collins
82. “I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.” – Alexander the Great
83. “A master can tell you what he expects of you. A teacher, though, awakens your own expectations.” – Patricia Neal
84. “You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.” – Swami Vivekananda
85. “Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre.” – Gail Godwin
86. “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
87. “A good teacher is a determined person.” – Gilbert Highet
88. “Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.” – Josef Albers
89. “A good teacher is like a candle – it consumes itself to light the way for others.” – Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
90. “If you are a teacher you are a bridge builder. You build a bridge for children between what they do not know and what they know.” – Jesse Jackson
91. “The great teachers fill you up with hope and shower you with a thousand reasons to embrace all aspects of life.” – Pat Conroy
92. “The best teachers are the ones that change their minds.” – Terry Heick
93. “Good teachers are costly, but bad teachers cost more.” – Bob Talbert
94. “A teacher’s purpose is not to create students in his own image, but to develop students who can create their own image.” – Unknown
95. “The role of the teacher remains the highest calling of a free people.” – Shirley Hufstedler
96. “I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.” – Stanley Kubrick
97. “The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.” – William James
98. “The more that you read, the more things you will know, the more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” – Dr. Seuss
99. “Teaching is not about answering questions but about raising questions – opening doors for them in places that they could not imagine.” – Yawar Baig
100. “You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself.” – Galileo Galilei
101. “A teacher plants the seeds of knowledge, sprinkles them with love, and patiently nurtures their growth to produce tomorrow’s dreams.” – Unknown
102. “Great teachers empathize with kids, respect them, and believe that each one has something special that can be built upon.” – Ann Lieberman
103. “Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best.” – Bob Talbert
104. “Teaching is the essential profession, the one that makes all other professions possible.” – David Haselkorn
105. “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
106. “A great teacher who is full of excitement and love for her students can make all the difference in their lives.” – Deval Patrick
107. “Teachers have three loves: love of learning, love of learners, and the love of bringing the first two loves together.” – Scott Hayden
108. “What we instill in our children will be the foundation upon which they build their future.” – Steve Maraboli
109. “The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future in life.” – Plato
110. “He who dares to teach must never cease to learn.” – John Cotton Dana
47 Journal Prompts For Fostering Growth & Learning