SelfHelpCollective.com

Inspirational Teacher Quotes

"You can pay people to teach, But you can't pay them to care."
--Marva Collins

Teachers! We all have an opinion about them - good or bad - and we all owe a great deal to that special teacher that believed in us. (I'm sure that's true.) And it can't be an easy job to do - being a teacher, either! If it was, we'd all be doing it, no? So that's why...

• I've compiled this modest list of quotations about teachers and teaching - to celebrate the good and bad of teaching
  
  
• Whether you're disappointed with the teachers in your life, or whether you think great teaching got you where you are today, you'll find a quotation to suit.

...I think so anyway. If not, do let me know. I welcome your comments about these inspirational quotes. Now tuck that shirt in, and off we go...

Teaching Quotations - Free Inspirational Quotes

Inspirational teacher quotes - what they say...

"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires."
-- William Arthur Ward

"Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself."
-- Chinese Proverb

(This inspirational teacher quote is the essence of the Self Help Collective website, I believe - how about you?)

"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

"How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it."
-- Alexandre Dumas

(Or it could be that fear takes a hold of us, as we get older, Alexander, and we become 'less' - less intelligent, for one thing.)

"The secret of teaching is to appear to have known all your life what you learned this afternoon."
-- Anonymous

"We can teach from our experience, but we cannot teach experience."
-- Sasha Azevedo

"Teaching people skills without giving them a vision for a better future -- a vision based on common values -- is only training."
-- Nido Qubein

"Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition."
-- Jacques Barzun

"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops."
-- Henry Brooks Adams

"You teach best what you most need to learn."
-- Richard David Bach

(This is also one of those teaching quotations that sums up why I created this website!)

"The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education."
-- Maya Angelou

"If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things."
-- Saul Bellow

(And a good place to start with this 're-education' (of women) is in that of body image and self image, in my humble opinion.)

"I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance."
-- E E Cummings

"Real education should educate us out of self into something far finer; into a selflessness which links us with all humanity."
-- Lady Nancy Astor

"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

Inspirational teacher quotes - what they still say...

And no page on inspirational teacher quotes would be complete without this Pink Floyd video (Another Brick in the Wall). Hey, even Teach agrees I'm sure (don't you?). I mean, "We don't need no education. We don't need no thought control..." - oh boy, they don't write 'em like they used to, eh!

"Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty"
-- Albert Einstein

"He who dares to teach must never cease to learn."
-- Richard Henry Dann

"Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfillment; it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment for the individual to explore, in his own way."
-- Noam Chomsky

"I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework."
-- Edith Ann

(Would YOU like some homework? :-) How about taking one of these self-help tests, then! )

"A master can tell you what he expects of you. A teacher, though, awakens your own expectation."
-- Unknown

"There are three things to remember when teaching: know your stuff; know whom you are stuffing; and then stuff them elegantly"
-- Lola May

(More funny inspirational quotes here!)

"The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery."
-- Mark van Doren

"Rewards and punishments are the lowest form of education."
-- Chuang-Tzu

"He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches."
-- George Bernard Shaw

(Ah, the legendary (un-) inspirational teacher quote. It was GBS who gave it 'what for' to the teachers all along - fancy that! Do you agree with this somewhat inflammatory comment? Let us know! (D Liton did not agree - and this is what she said!))

And, as an antidote to GBS here's a brand new quote from MB (Michael Barringer)...

"Teaching is the greatest of all the arts, for the teacher creates many masterpieces all at the same time, education is the foundation of intellect, and intellect is the foundation of genius, and the student with the inspired mind, that will one day rise above everyone's expectations to lead their own life, and possibly our nation, and the world owe's it all to you, the teachers!"
-- Michael Barringer

"No printed word, nor spoken plea can teach young minds what they should be. Not all the books on all the shelves – but what the teachers are themselves."
-- Rudyard Kipling

(And if you like this by Rudyard Kipling, you'll like that: his poem called If.)

"Experience is the worst teacher, it gives the test before the lesson."
-- Vernon Law

"Education is the best provision for old age."
-- Aristotle

Inspirational Teacher Quotes - What Next?

(Or, you could visit the great GoodReads.com site - https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/teachers .)