50 Inspirational Quotes for Teachers
In light of school being moved to e-learning for the remainder of the year at all levels, I wanted to put together a list of inspirational quotes for teachers.
Our teachers, those who teach kids, teens, and adults, are struggling. It’s such a hard pivot to turn face-to-face classes into online classes. Not only is it a lot of up front work and preparation, but for many it’s something they’ve never done before. Nevermind other worries like whether students have access to the resources they need to succeed in their home environments. Things like computers, the internet, or even enough to eat.
We worry about our students, and right now a lot of teachers feel like they can’t be there for their students - not in the way they usually are.
Even at the college level, we sometimes don’t realize the impact we can have on our students, not just in their learning, but in their personal and professional growth. I’ve had students, and many of you probably have too, who learn far more in my classes than what I can teach them.
This is what teachers are missing, and what students are missing, too. Teachers are some of the best and brightest resources we have, and we need to remember that as they are doing their best in this time, they should be treasured.
Sometimes the best thing we can do for others is share inspiring words and lift them up in the small ways we have available.
So this week, for all educators, but especially my fellow college English teachers, I have gathered 50 of my favorite inspirational quotes for teachers.
They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.
Carl W. Buehner
Teaching is the greatest act of optimism.
Colleen Wilcox
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
What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul.
Joseph Addison
Teaching is the profession that teaches all other professions.
Unknown
A master can tell you what he expects of you. A teacher, though, awakens your own expectations.
Patricia Neal
The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.
Mark Van Doren
A good teacher is like a candle: it consumes itself to light the way for others.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
Children need to be taught how to think, not what to think.
Margaret Mead
Nine tenths of education is encouragement.
Anatole France
Teachers have three loves: love of learning, love of learners, and the love of bringing the first two loves together.
Scott Hayden
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
Nelson Mandela
Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre.
Gail Godwin
To teach is to learn twice over.
Joseph Joubert
Teachers can change lives with just the right mix of chalk and challenges.
Joyce Meyer
Everyone who remembers his own education remembers teachers, not methods and techniques. The teacher is the heart of the educational system.
Sidney Hook
If you have to put someone on a pedestal, put teachers. They are society's heroes.
Guy Kawasaki
Teachers believe they have a gift for giving; it drives them with the same irrepressible drive that drives others to create a work of art or a market or a building.
A. Bartlett Giamatti
I am not a teacher, but an awakener.
Robert Frost
One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.
Malala Yousafzai
I never teach my pupils, I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.
Albert Einstein
What we learn with pleasure we never forget.
Alfred Mercier
The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.
John Lubbock
What you teach today may someday light the world.
L.W. Fox
The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.
B.B. King
Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.
Aristotle
I entered the classroom with the conviction that it was crucial for me and every other student to be an active participant, not a passive consumer...education as the practice of freedom.... education that connects the will to know with the will to become. Learning is a place where paradise can be created.
bell hooks
In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.
Phil Collins
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
Anne Frank
The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know.
Simone Weil
Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.
Malcolm X
We can't help everyone, but everyone can help someone.
Ronald Reagan
The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.
Dr. Seuss
The teacher’s task is to initiate the learning process and then get out of the way.
John Warren
Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.
Josef Albers
Education is not to reform students or amuse them or to make them expert technicians. It is to unsettle their minds, widen their horizons, inflame their intellects, teach them to think straight, if possible.
Robert Hutchins
Teachers are expected to reach unattainable goals with inadequate tools. The miracle is that at times they accomplish this impossible task.
Haim Ginott
Teaching is truth mediated by personality.
Phyllis Brooks
When the untapped potential of a student meets the liberating art of a teacher, a miracle unfolds.
Mary Hatwood Futrell
There is no failure. Only feedback.
Robert Allen
I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.
John Steinbeck
Teachers, I believe, are the most responsible and important members of society because their professional efforts affect the fate of the earth.
Helen Caldicott
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of a good teacher.
Temple Grandin
In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something else.
Lee Iacocca
Of all the hard jobs around, one of the hardest is being a good teacher.
Maggie Gallagher
If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people.
Chinese Proverb
If a child can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.
Ignacio Estrada
Learning is not a spectator sport.
D. Blocher
At the desk where I sit, I have learned one great truth. The answer for all our national problems — the answer for all the problems of the world — comes to a single word. That word is education.
Lyndon B. Johnson
I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.
Socrates
These are some of my favorite quotes about teachers and education - did I miss any great ones? Drop a comment below or email me at rachel@capturingyourconfidence.com and let me know!