We all have at least one teacher who changes our lives. Here are a few famous quotes to celebrate these inspiring mentors!
“Teachers can change lives with just the right mix of chalk and challenges.” – Joyce Meyer.
“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” – William Arthur Ward.
“Good teachers know how to bring out the best in students.” – Charles Kuralt
“When you study by great teachers… you will learn much more from their caring and hard work than from their style.” – William Glasser
“Education is the key to success in life, and teachers make a lasting impact in the lives of their students.” – Solomon Ortiz
“The older I got, the smarter my teachers became.” – Ally Carter
“What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches.” – Karl A. Menninger
“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” – Henry Adams
“You can’t stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.” – J.D. Salinger
“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” – Albert Einstein
“A teacher who loves learning earns the right and the ability to help others learn.” – Ruth Beechick
“The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.” – Mark Van Doren
“True patience is grounded in wisdom & compassion.” – Allan Lokos
“Teachers, I believe, are the most responsible and important members of society because their professional efforts affect the fate of the earth.” – Helen Caldicott
“The average teacher explains complexity; the gifted teacher reveals simplicity.” – Robert Brault
“A good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination, and instill a love of learning.” – Brad Henry
“The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.” – C. S. Lewis
“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” – Albert Einstein
“Good teachers know how to bring out the best in students.” – Charles Kuralt
“A good teacher, like a good entertainer first must hold his audience’s attention, then he can teach his lesson.” – John Henrik Clarke
“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 be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.” – John Steinbeck
“I cannot emphasize enough the importance of a good teacher.” – Temple Grandin
“Teachers affect eternity; no one can tell where their influence stops.” – Henry Brooks Adams
“Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.” – Jacques Barzun
“The man or woman who can make hard things easy is the educator.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Children are like wet cement, whatever falls on them makes an impression.” – Haim Ginott
“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
“Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best.” – Bob Talbert
“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” – William A. Ward
“A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.” – James Baldwin
“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 M. Hutchins
“If a child can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.” – Ignacio ‘Nacho’ Estrada
“Never do anything for a student that he he is capable of doing for himself. If you do you, you’ll make him an educational cripple…a pedagogical paraplegic.” – Howard Hendricks
“Administrators need to shift from being controllers to enablers, so as to liberate the energies and talents of the teachers.” – Steve Denning
“A gifted teacher is not only prepared to meet the needs of today’s child, but is also prepared to foresee the hopes and dreams in every child’s future.” – Robert John Meehan
“A good teacher is like a candle – it consumes itself to light the way for others.” – Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
“A hundred years from now, it will not matter what kind of car I drove, what kind of house I lived in, how much money I had in the bank … but the world may be a better place because I made a difference in the life of a child.” – Forest Witcraft
“A master can tell you what he expects of you. A teacher, though, awakens your own expectations.” – Patricia Neal
A teacher has two jobs; fill young minds with knowledge, yes, but more important, give those minds a compass so that that knowledge doesn’t go to waste.” – Mr. Holland’s Opus
“A teacher is a compass that activates the magnets of curiosity, knowledge, and wisdom in the pupils.” – Ever Garrison
“A teacher is never too smart to learn from his pupils.” – Bill Bowerman
“A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.” – Thomas Carruthers
“Don’t try to fix the students, fix ourselves first. The good teacher makes the poor student good and the good student superior. When our students fail, we, as teachers, too, have failed.” – Marva Collins
“Every child deserves a champion – an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection, and insists that they become the best that they can possibly be.” – Rita F. Pierson
“Every teacher is a reflection of his or her students.” – Chris Walker
“Great teachers empathize with kids, respect them, and believe that each one has something special that can be built upon.” – Ann Lieberman
“I am not a teacher, but an awakener.” – Robert Frost
“Ideal 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 bridges of their own.” – Nikos Kazantzakis
“If I ran a school, I’d give the average grade to the ones who gave me all the right answers, for being good parrots. I’d give the top grades to those who made a lot of mistakes and told me about them, and then told me what they learned from them.” – Buckminster Fuller
“If kids come to us from strong, healthy functioning families, it makes our job easier. If they do not come to us from strong, healthy, functioning families, it makes our job more important.” – Barbara Colorose
“If we are truly effective teachers, then we are creating autonomous, independent, and self directed learners, not just successful test takers.” – Robert John Meehan
“If you really want to know about the future, don’t ask a technologist, a scientist, a physicist. No! Don’t ask somebody who’s writing code. No, if you want to know what society’s going to be like in 20 years, ask a kindergarten teacher.” – Clifford
“I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.” – Lily Tomlin
“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
“I saw as a teacher how, if you take that spark of learning that those children have, and you ignite it, you can take a child from any background to a lifetime of creativity and accomplishment.” – Paul Wellstone
“No man can be a good teacher unless he has feelings of warm affection toward his pupils and a genuine desire to impart to them what he believes to be of value.” – Bertrand Russell
“One mark of a great educator is the ability to lead students out to new places where even the educator has never been.” – Thomas Groome
“Perseverance is the hard work you do in the classroom after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.” – Robert John Meehan
“Teachers are expected to reach unattainable goals with inadequate tools. The miracle is that at times they accomplish this impossible task.” – Haim G. Ginott
“Teachers are flexible and can work on their lesson plans from anywhere!” – Heidi McDonald
“Teachers are unique problem solvers by character, temperament, and resilience. Teachers can not be manufactured.” – Robert John Meehan
“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.” – Angelo Bartlett Giamatti
“Teachers have three loves: love of learning, love of learners, and love of bringing the first two loves together.” – Scott Hayden
Teachers teach because they care. Teaching young people is what they do best. It requires long hours, patience, and care.” – Horace Mann
“Teamwork is the fuel that allows common teachers to obtain uncommon results.” – Robert John Meehan
“Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.” – Bill Gates
“The average teacher explains complexity; the gifted teacher reveals simplicity.” – Robert Brault
“The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don’t tell you what to see.” – Alexandra Trenfor
“The best teacher of children, in brief, is one who is essentially childlike.” – H. L. Mencken
“The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called truth.” – Dan Rather
“The good teacher discovers the natural gifts of his pupils and liberates them.” – Stephen Neil
“The good teacher makes the poor student good and the good student superior. When our students fail, we as teachers have failed. ” – Marva Collins
“The greatest sign of a success for a teacher is to be able to say: The children are now working as if I did not exist.” – Maria Montessori
“The job of an educator is to teach students to see the vitality in themselves.” – Joseph Campbell
“The man who can make hard things easy is the educator.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There is no system in the world or any school in the country that is better than its teachers. Teachers are the lifeblood of the success of schools.” – Ken Robinson
“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
“The true aim of everyone who aspires to be a teacher should be, not to impart his own opinions, but to kindle minds.” – F. W. Robertson
“The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence.” – Amos Bronson Alcott
“The wise teacher knows that 55 minutes of work plus 5 minutes laughter are worth twice as much as 60 minutes of unvaried work.” – Gilbert Highet
“They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” – Carl W. Buechner
“Those who can, teach. Those who can’t, do something far less important.” – Shirley Frye
“Thought flows in terms of stories – stories about events, stories about people, and stories about intentions and achievements. The best teachers are the best story tellers. We learn in the form of stories.” – Frank Smith
“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of becoming.” – Goethe
“True teachers illuminate the path to achievement, believing the best way to predict a child’s future is to help create it.” – Robert John Meehan
“True teachers rise to the top not by chance but through passion and purpose.” – Robert John Meehan
“We all need to go into the classroom believing our students can and will meet and often exceed our expectations.” – Robert John Meehan
“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” – Winston Churchill
“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
“You can get help from teachers, but you are going to have to learn a lot by yourself, sitting alone in a room.” – Dr. Seuss
“You have the most important job of anyone today. Our kids need you to advocate for their futures.” – George Lucas
“Your career as a teacher is going to fill a large part of your life. The only way to be a truly satisfied teacher is to do it with passion and vigor.” – Robert John Meehan
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