Inspirational Quotes for Teachers

Teacher and mature student

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Inspired teachers are exceptional teachers, and they change lives. When you need a little inspiration, or if you know a teacher who does, an uplifting quotation can do the job. Make a poster for the teacher's lounge, send a text or card, find one that speaks to you as a mantra, be creative.

Quotes for Teachers

These will get you started:

  • "The job of an educator is to teach students to see the vitality in themselves."
    Joseph Campbell
  • "I am not a teacher, but an awakener. "
    Robert Frost
  • "Where there is an open mind there will always be a frontier. "
    Charles F. Kettering
  • "Teachers open the door. You enter by yourself. "
    Chinese Proverb
  • "Awaken people's curiosity. It is enough to open minds, do not overload them. Put there just a spark."
    Anatole France
  • "Life is amazing: and the teacher had better prepare himself to be a medium for that amazement."
    Edward Blishen
  • "It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge."
    Albert Einstein
  • "An understanding heart is everything in a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feeling. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child."
    Carl Jung
  • "I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think. "
    —Socrates
  • "The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery. "
    —Mark Van Doren
  • "Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young."
    —Henry Ford
  • "The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires."
    —William Arthur Ward
  • "What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches."
    —Soren Kierkegaard
  • "Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers."
    —Josef Albers
  • "We think of the effective teachers we have had over the years with a sense of recognition, but those who have touched our humanity we remember with a deep sense of gratitude." —Anonymous Student
  • "Whatever you teach, be brief; what is quickly said the mind readily receives and faithfully retains, while everything superfluous runs over as from a full container. Who knows much says least."
    —Author Unknown
  • "Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be."
    —Thomas A. Kempis
  • "Who dares to teach must never cease to learn."
    —John C. Dana
  • "If a doctor, lawyer, or dentist had 40 people in his office at one time, all of whom had different needs, and some of whom didn't want to be there and were causing trouble, and the doctor, lawyer, or dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all with professional excellence for nine months, then he might have some conception of the classroom teacher's job."
    —Donald D. Quinn
  • "Teachers who inspire know that teaching is like cultivating a garden, and those who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers."
    —Author Unknown
  • "Teachers who inspire realize there will always be rocks in the road ahead of us. They will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; it all depends on how we use them."
    —Author Unknown
  • "One must learn by doing the thing; for though you think you know it, you have no certainty, until you try."
    —Sophocles
  • "The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think—rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men."
    —Bill Beattie
  • "He who asks a question may be a fool for five minutes. But he who never asks a question remains a fool forever."
    —Tom J. Connelly
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Peterson, Deb. "Inspirational Quotes for Teachers." ThoughtCo, Aug. 26, 2020, thoughtco.com/quotations-to-inspire-teacher-of-adults-31637. Peterson, Deb. (2020, August 26). Inspirational Quotes for Teachers. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/quotations-to-inspire-teacher-of-adults-31637 Peterson, Deb. "Inspirational Quotes for Teachers." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/quotations-to-inspire-teacher-of-adults-31637 (accessed March 19, 2024).