100+ Inspirational Preschool Teacher Quotes to Motivate and Uplift Educators

"Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood."

- Fred Rogers

"Children come into the world exquisitely designed, and strongly motivated, to educate themselves. They don’t need to be forced to learn; in fact, coercion undermines their natural desire to learn."

- Peter Gray

"Children are not the people of tomorrow, but people today. They are entitled to be taken seriously. They have a right to be treated by adults with tenderness and respect, as equals."

- Janusz Korczak

"While it is important to educate children, what is much more pressing is the need to love them. When education becomes more important than love, it is no longer education at all. For, tending to the delicate spirit of children is foundational if education is to fulfill its intended purpose of serving the greater whole."

- Vince Gowmon

"Early childhood education is the key to the betterment of society."

- Maria Montessori

"It is vital that when educating our children’s brains we do not neglect to educate their hearts."

- Dalai Lama

"I’ve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized."

- Haim G. Ginott

"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops."

- Henry Adams

"What is essential is to realize that children learn independently, not in bunches; that they learn out of interest and curiosity, not to please or appease the adults in power; and that they ought to be in control of their own learning, deciding for themselves what they want to learn and how they want to learn it."

- John Holt

"Remind yourself daily: While education is useful, it’s love that children and the world need. A deeply loved child with only some education will go much further than a well educated child lacking love."

- Vince Gowmon

"It’s not so much what children learn through play, but what they won’t learn if we don’t give them the chance to play. Many functional skills like literacy and arithmetic can be learned either through play or through instruction – the issue is the amount of stress on the child. However, many coping skills like compassion, self-regulation, self-confidence, the habit of active engagement, and the motivation to learn and be literate cannot be instructed. They can only be learned through self-directed experience (i.e. play)."

- Susan J. Oliver

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."

- W.B. Yeats

"Children learn as they play. Most importantly, in play children learn how to learn."

- O. Fred Donaldson

"The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go."

- Dr. Seuss

"I touch the future. I teach."

- Christa McAuliffe

"Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today."

- Malcolm X

"One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world."

- Malala Yousafzai

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."

- Nelson Mandela

"Children are not things to be moulded, but people to be unfolded."

- Jess Lair

"100 years from now it won’t matter what kind of car I drove, what kind of house I lived in, how much money I had in the bank, nor what my clothes looked like. But the world may be a little better because I was important in the life of a child."

- Forest Witcraft

"Teaching is the greatest act of optimism."

- Colleen Wilcox

"If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow."

- John Dewey

"Children are the world's most valuable resource and its best hope for the future."

- John F. Kennedy

"In learning, you will teach, and in teaching, you will learn."

- Phil Collins

"Nothing can dim a light that shines from within."

- Maya Angelou

"Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace."

- Confucius

"The future of the world is in my classroom today."

- Ivan Welton Fitzwater

"Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching kids what counts is best."

- Bob Talbert

"One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world."

- Malala Yousafzai

"Teachers can make such a profound impact on our lives and should be honored as heroes."

- Rainn Wilson

"You can’t stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it."

- J.D. Salinger

"The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery."

- Mark van Doren

"A good teacher isn’t someone who gives the answers out to their kids but is understanding of needs and challenges and gives tools to help other people succeed."

- Justin Trudeau

"Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all."

- Aristotle

"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires."

- William A. Ward

"It’s the teacher that makes the difference, not the classroom."

- Michael Morpurgo

"Invest in our teachers, and our children will succeed."

- Barack Obama

"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 the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches."

- Karl Menninger

"If you look behind every exceptional person there is an exceptional teacher."

- Stephen Hawking

"A good teacher is like the rising sun that comes to fill the empty and dark minds with the light of the education"

- Anamika Mishra

"Children are likely to live up to what you believe of them."

- Lady Bird Johnson

"Some people change the world. And some people change the people who change the world, and that’s you."

- Kij Johnson

"The word ‘education’ comes from the Latin ‘educere’ = e- (out of) + -ducere (to draw). Education is not just about putting information in. We have forgotten that it, in fact, begins in the child’s heart."

- Vince Gowmon

"By education I mean an all-round drawing out of the best in the child and man; body, mind and spirit."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today."

- Stacia Tauscher

"Kids don’t remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are."

- Jim Henson

"Teaching is not about answering questions but about raising questions – opening doors for them in places that they could not imagine."

- Yawar Baig

"A child must know that he is a miracle, that since the beginning of the world there hasn’t been, and until the end of the world there will not be, another child like him."

- Casals

"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken adults."

- F. Douglas

"To take children seriously is to value them for who they are right now rather than adults-in-the-making."

- Alfie Kohn

"Every day, in a 100 small ways, our children ask, ‘Do you hear me? Do you see me? Do I matter?’ Their behavior often reflects our response."

- L.R. Knost

"A child can teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires."

- Paulo Coelho

"You cannot make people learn. You can only provide the right conditions for learning to happen."

- Vince Gowmon

"Love is the supreme form of communication. In the hierarchy of needs, love stands as the supreme developing agent of the humanity of the person. As such, the teaching of love should be the central core of all early childhood curriculum with all other subjects growing naturally out of such teaching."

- Ashley Montagu

"Remember: everyone in the classroom has a story that leads to misbehavior or defiance. 9 times out of 10, the story behind the misbehavior won’t make you angry. It will break your heart."

- Annette Breaux

"The work of education is divided between the teacher and the environment."

- Maria Montessori

"If children feel safe, they can take risks, ask questions, make mistakes, learn to trust, share their feelings, and grow."

- Alfie Kohn

"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge."

- Albert Einstein

"Children have real understanding only of that which they invent themselves."

- Jean Piaget

"Encouraging a child means that one or more of the following critical life messages are coming through, either by word or by action: I believe in you, I trust you, I know you can handle this, You are listened to, You are cared for, You are very important to me."

- Barbara Colorose

"If you trust play, you will not have to control your child’s development as much. Play will raise the child in ways you can never imagine."

- Vince Gowmon

"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught."

- Oscar Wilde

"The trouble with over-structuring is that it discourages exploration."

- Jay Giedd

"Let the child be the scriptwriter, the director and the actor in his own play."

- Magda Gerber

"Since the jobs that our preschoolers will do probably don’t exist yet, our priority is to teach them the skills to adapt and inquire and question and cooperate…life skills. So much more useful than rigid concepts such as the alphabet."

- Caroline Bellouse

"The art of being taught is the art of discovery, as the art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery to take place."

- Mark van Doren

"Play is the shortest route between children and their creative calling."

- Vince Gowmon

"If [the teacher] is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind."

- Kahlil Gibran

"Anything you can teach in an indoor classroom can be taught outdoors, often in ways that are more enjoyable for children."

- Cathy James

"Putting your students’ emotional needs first is important because without feeling safe and understood, no instructional strategy will be effective."

- Jasper Fox, Sr.

"The more risks you allow your children to make, the better they learn to look after themselves."

- Roald Dahl

"A spirited, unruly student is preferable. It’s much easier to direct passion than to try and inspire it."

- Joan Desmond

"Be sure that in your educating you are not manufacturing obedient citizens, but rather unleashing powerful, creative souls."

- Vince Gowmon

"The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion."

- Paulo Coelho

"What you’re supposed to do when you don’t like a thing is change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it. Don’t complain."

- Maya Angelou

"Every student can learn, just not on the same day or in the same way."

- George Evans

"Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression."

- Dr. Haim Ginott

"The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts."

- C. S. Lewis

"Children more than ever, need opportunities to be in their bodies in the world – jumping rope, bicycling, stream hopping, and fort building. It’s this engagement between limbs of the body and bones of the earth where true balance and centeredness emerge."

- David Sobel

"If we want our children to move mountains, we first have to let them get out of their chairs."

- Nicolette Sowder

"I believe that to teach them effectively you must touch their hearts long before you begin to teach their minds"

- Vicki Savini

"I keep trying to convey the pleasure every parent and teacher could feel while observing, appreciating and enjoying what the infant is doing. This attitude would change our educational climate from worry to joy. Can anybody argue about the benefits for a child who is appreciated and enjoyed for what she can do and does naturally? …I believe this issue is so basic, so important, that it cannot be overstated."

- Magda Gerber

"If we love our children and want them to thrive, we must allow them more time and opportunity to play, not less. Yet policymakers and powerful philanthropists are continuing to push us in the opposite direction — toward more schooling, more testing, more adult direction of children, and less opportunity for free play."

- Peter Gray

"In this modern world where activity is stressed to the point of mania, quietness as a childhood need is too often overlooked."

- Margaret Wise Brown

"When we give children advice or instant solutions, we deprive them of the experience that comes from wrestling with their own problems."

- Adele Faber

"Too much leading and we create anxiety for children. Too much following and the same is true. In wisdom we find balance between the two."

- Vince Gowmon

"If we taught babies to talk as most skills are taught in school, they would memorize lists of sounds in a predetermined order and practice them alone in a closet."

- Linda Darling-Hammond

"Play is the highest expression of human development in childhood, for it alone is the free expression of what is in a child’s soul."

- Friedrich Froebel

"With children, it is the joint moments of delight that build the social brain."

- Mariah Moser

"I shouldn’t have to defend play for children any more than I should have to defend their eating, sleeping, and breathing."

- Rae Pica

"Stand aside for a while and leave room for learning, observe carefully what children do, and then, if you have understood well, perhaps teaching will be different from before."

- Loris Malaguzzi

"When our little people are overwhelmed by big emotions it is our job to share our calm, not join their chaos."

- L.R. Knost

"So often children are punished for being human. Children are not allowed to have grumpy moods, bad days, disrespectful tones, or bad attitudes. Yet, us adults have them all the time. None of us are perfect. We must stop holding our children to a higher standard of perfection than we can attain ourselves."

- Rebecca Eanes

"No significant learning occurs without a significant relationship."

- James Comer

"Instead of teaching children to get ‘there’, why not let them be here? Where is ‘there’ anyway? The world needs more ‘here’ than ‘there’."

- Vince Gowmon

"There are no average children. There are no standard children."

- Cassi Clausen

"Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time."

- Rabindranath Tagore

"Children don’t need much advice but they really do need to be listened to and not just with half an ear."

- Emma Thompson

"If a child is acting disruptive within the school system, don’t be too quick to assume there is something wrong with her. She simply may be doing her best to say that the system is not large enough to house the fullness of her creative spirit."

- Vince Gowmon

"Either we spend time meeting children’s emotional needs by filling their cup with love, or we spend time dealing with behaviors caused from their unmet needs. Either way, we spend the time."

- Pam Leo

"I’m more interested in arousing enthusiasm in kids than in teaching the facts. The facts may change, but that enthusiasm for exploring the world will remain with them the rest of their lives."

- Seymour Simon

"Everything we do as teachers must ensure that the child’s inherent desire to learn is kept alive."

- Robert John Meehan

"True play is child-initiated and child-directed. It can occur on a blank playground. It can occur with a few tires. Children can play – and do play – when all they are given is space and time."

- Heather Shumaker

"Close observation of children at play suggests that they find out about the world in the same way as scientists find out about new phenonoma and test new ideas…during this exploration, all the senses are used to observe and draw conclusions about objects and events through simple, if crude, scientific investigations."

- Judith Roden

"It is not attention that the child is seeking, but love."

- Sigmund Freud

"Your image of the child is where teaching begins."

- Loris Malaguzzi

"Learning and teaching should not stand on opposite banks and just watch the river flow by; instead, they should embark together on a journey down the water. Through an active, reciprocal exchange, teaching can strengthen learning how to learn."

- Loris Malaguzzi

"If you love them today, maybe you can teach them tomorrow."

- Jeffrey R. Holland

"The best thing about being a teacher is that it matters."

- Todd Whitaker

"For a small child there is no division between playing and learning; between the things he or she does ‘just for fun’ and things that are ‘educational.’ The child learns while living and any part of living that is enjoyable is also play."

- Penelope Leach

"What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family."

- Mother Teresa

"Kids deserve the right to think that they can change the world."

- Lois Lowry

"Teachers have three loves: love of learning, love of learners, and the love of bringing the first two loves together."

- Scott Hayden

"Our children should be properly introduced to the world in which they live."

- Thomas Berry

"The more you teach / push those things that can be measured, the more kids will grow up feeling like they don’t measure up."

- Vince Gowmon

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."

- Pablo Picasso

"It is not intellect but rather imagination that is the source of creativity. What if imagination was nurtured as much if not more in school?"

- Vince Gowmon

"An environmental-based education movement—at all levels of education—will help students realize that school isn’t supposed to be a polite form of incarceration but a portal to the wider world."

- Richard Louv

"The ultimate gift we can give the world is to grow our tiny humans into adult humans who are independent thinkers, compassionate doers, conscious questioners, radical innovators, and passionate peacemakers. Our world doesn’t need more adults who blindly serve the powerful because they’ve been trained to obey authority without question. Our world needs more adults who challenge and question and hold the powerful accountable."

- L.R. Knost

"If it hasn’t been in the hand and body, it can’t be in the brain."

- Bev Bos

"If we want children to play BIG in the world, then let’s let them play in small ways to start."

- Vince Gowmon

"Childhood is not a race to see how quickly a child can read, write and count. It is a small window of time to learn and develop at the pace that is right for each individual child. Earlier is not better."

- Magda Gerber

"A ‘naughty child’ doesn’t exist—a child who acts out is simply a child with unmet needs."

- Birgitte Coste

"Movement isn’t a break from learning; movement is learning, and the opportunities for thoughtful exploration in the classroom are endless."

- Aleta Margolis

"Teach children what to think and you limit them to your ideas. Teach children how to think and their ideas are unlimited."

- Sandra Parks

"A child learns when time. Some want to read at age three and some don’t care until age eight. There is no right or wrong way, no best timeline. If a child shows no interest in reading or math, it’s because he or she has something far more important to explore."

- Vince Gowmon

"The secret in education lies in respecting the student."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"When children pretend, they’re using their imaginations to move beyond the bounds of reality. A stick can be a magic wand. A sock can be a puppet. A small child can be a superhero."

- Fred Rogers

"It is in playing, and only in playing, that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self."

- D.W. Winnicott

"To effectively teach a child one must reach the child in mind-body-heart, not just intellect, not just the linear-left brain we make such a priority."

- Vince Gowmon

"Watching a child makes it obvious that the development of his mind comes through his movements."

- Maria Montessori

"Are we forming children who are only capable of learning what is known, or should we try to develop creative and innovative minds?"

- Jean Piaget

"We learn to do something by doing it. There is no other way."

- John Holt

"Explain to me again: how come we treat reading and mathematics as more important than learning to get along with one another?"

- Pennie Brownlee

"Classroom management is not about having the right rules… it’s about having the right relationships."

- @SteeleThoughts

"So you pull me from my play, my all consuming play to _learn_ maths with brightly coloured bits of plastic. Whilst I sit there _learning_ with you, all I can think about is getting back to my play… my all consuming play where I was measuring, using shapes, making patterns, counting, solving problems and THINKING – until I got pulled away to come and _learn_ maths with you."

- Elaine Bennett

"The more adults turn play into a project, the more it loses its very essence. The gifts derived from play are suffocated by unnecessary structure and hovering, leaving little room for the child to learn, develop and enjoy his or her explorations."

- Vince Gowmon

"When you teach a child something, you take away forever the chance for him to discover it himself."

- Jean Piaget

"Deep meaning lies often in childish play."

- Johann Friedrich von Schiller

"Do not…keep children to their studies by compulsion but by play."

- Plato

"Learning is alive when experiential, relevant and joyful. It is all but dead when limited to disassociated rationale and sedentariness."

- Vince Gowmon

"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination."

- Albert Einstein

"Children dance before they know there is anything that isn’t music."

- William Stafford

"The art of teaching lies in knowing the balance between structure and flow, telling and asking, speaking and silence."

- Vince Gowmon

"Children first realize they can make a difference when parents listen, then respond with sensitivity."

- Elizabeth Hartley-Brewer

"Children remind us to treasure the smallest of gifts, even in the most difficult of times."

- Allen Klein

"You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives."

- Clay P. Bedford

"The best teacher of children, in brief, is one who is essentially childlike."

- H. L. Mencken

"Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury. Play is a necessity."

- Kay Redfield Jamison

"The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence."

- Rabindranath Tagore

"A man never stands as tall as when he kneels to help a child."

- Knights of Pythagoras

"Stop trying to turn children into someone they are not. Instead, let them unfold into who no human can imagine them to be."

- Vince Gowmon

"One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings."

- Carl Jung

"Every child needs at least one adult who is irrationally crazy about him or her."

- Urie Bronfenbrenner

"Children must be taught how to think, not what to think."

- Margaret Mead

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."

- Alvin Toffler

"The people who are horrified by the idea of children learning what they want to learn when they want to learn it have not accepted the very elementary psychological fact that people (all people, of every age) remember the things that are important to them – the things they need to know – and forget the rest."

- Daniel Quinn

"It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them."

- Leo Buscaglia

"Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best."

- Bob Talbert

"Trust children. Nothing could be more simple, or more difficult. Difficult because to trust children we must first learn to trust ourselves, and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted."

- John Holt

"Do not train children to learn by force and 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

"The best education does not happen at a desk, but rather engaged in everyday living – hands on, exploring, in active relationship with life."

- Vince Gowmon

"Kids bullied into obeying parents and teachers may resist – not because they’re ‘hard to handle’ but because they’ve been treated as a thing to be handled."

- Alfie Kohn

"Learning is a result of listening, which in turn leads to even better listening and attentiveness to the other person. In other words, to learn from the child, we must have empathy, and empathy grows as we learn."

- Alice Miller

"The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don’t tell you what to see."

- Alexandra K. Trenfor

"Strong-willed children become adults who change the world as long as can hang on for the ride and resist the temptation to ‘tame’ the spirit out of them."

- Sarah Stogryn

"Teaching children about the natural world should be treated as one of the most important events in their lives."

- Thomas Berry

"If the child is not learning the way you are teaching, then you must teach in the way the child learns"

- Rita Dunn

"Discipline is helping a child solve a problem. Punishment is making a child suffer for having a problem. To raise problem solvers, focus on solutions, not retribution."

- L.R. Knost

"Give children toys that are powered by their imagination, not by batteries."

- H. Jackson Brown Jr.

"When I approach a child, he inspires in me two sentiments – tenderness for what he is and respect for what he may become."

- Louis Pasteur

"If we want children to become creative leaders then we must learn to follow their lead at an early age."

- Vince Gowmon

"Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning."

- William Arthur Ward

"We see how early childhood experiences are so important to lifelong outcomes, how the early environment literally becomes embedded in the brain and changes its architecture."

- Andrew S. Garner

"What we are teaches the child far more than what we say, so we must be what we want our children to become."

- Joseph Chilton Pearce

"A teacher is a compass that activates the magnets of curiosity, knowledge and wisdom in the pupils."

- Ever Garrison

"The best way to preserve a child’s vision is to let them see things their way rather than yours."

- Jacob Liberman

"We have forgotten that children are designed by nature to learn through self-directed play and exploration, and so, more and more, we deprive them of freedom to learn."

- Peter O. Gray

"This then is the first duty of an educator: to stir up life but leave it free to develop."

- Maria Montessori

"The need for imagination, a sense of truth, and a feeling of responsibility—these three forces are the very nerve of education."

- Rudolf Steiner

"Children learn and listen more willingly when they are met with kindness, empathy and patience; when their core need for connection or attachment is met."

- Vince Gowmon

"As with everything else about children’s behavior, there’s nothing like a good role model. If you value play, your child will, too."

- Madeline Levine

"Movement is the door to learning."

- Paul E. Dennison

"Children understand and remember concepts best when they learn from direct personal experience."

- Joseph Cornell

"So often, children are punished for being human. Children are not allowed to have grumpy moods, bad days, disrespectful tones, or bad attitudes, yet we adults have them all the time! We think if we don’t nip it in the bud, it will escalate and we will lose control. Let go of that unfounded fear and give your child permission to be human. We all have days like that. None of us are perfect, and we must stop holding our children to a higher standard of perfection than we can attain ourselves. All of the punishments you could throw at them will not stamp out their humanity, for to err is human, and we all do it sometimes."

- Rebecca Eanes

"It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength."

- Maya Angelou

"Rushing children’s development is a formula for turning them into who they are not. Letting them play is a kind means of meeting them where they are and encouraging their authentic unfolding."

- Vince Gowmon

"The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice."

- Peggy O’Mara

"When we deny children play, we are denying them the right to understand the world."

- Erika & Nicholas Christakis

"Children always learn, but not necessarily what you want them to learn."

- Dr.Lillian Katz

"I cherish the occasions when my daughter manages to do something for the first time, or does something better than she’s ever done it before. But I try to resist the knee-jerk tendency to say, ‘Good job!’ because I don’t want to dilute her joy. I want her to share her pleasure with me, not look to me for a verdict. I want her to exclaim, ‘I did it!’ (which she often does) instead of asking me uncertainly, ‘Was that good?’"

- Alfie Kohn

"So much developmental trauma can be avoided if we simply give children the right to exercise their natural right to play, to move, to explore the outdoors unsupervised… if we let children be children!"

- Vince Gowmon

"Children grow up hearing how broken the environment is, how broken beyond repair. Plant strawberries together, make wild medicines, paint the sunrise. Show them proof that for every act of destruction, they can sow a seed, however small, of beauty."

- Nicolette Sowder

"Looking back, I realize that nurturing curiosity and the instinct to seek solutions are perhaps the most important contributions education can make."

- Paul Berg

"Children’s emotions are as real as yours. Just because they might get sad over the colour of their cup, does not make their feelings any less real."

- Rebekah Lipp

"Grown men can learn from very little children, for the hearts of little children are pure. Therefore, the Great Spirit may show them many things that older people miss."

- Black Elk

"Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children."

- Charles R. Swindoll

"All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants"

- J.W. Gardner

"Being considerate of others will take your children further in life than any college degree."

- Marian Wright Edelman

"Don’t educate a child to become something or someone, educate to help them explore and celebrate who they already are."

- Vince Gowmon

"There is no trust more sacred than the one the world holds with children."

- Kofi Annan

"The goal of early childhood education should be to activate the child’s own natural desire to learn."

- Maria Montessori

"There can never be too much nature inside a classroom. It is the antidote to the fast-paced, stressful world in which many young children live. Equally important, it encourages an appreciation of the natural world on which we depend."

- Condie Ward

"It’s not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world. It’s our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless."

- L.R. Knost

"Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold."

- Joseph Chilton Pearce

"Teaching is learning. They are inseparable. The humility of a teacher is born when this is realized. Only then does teaching really begin."

- Vince Gowmon

"A baby is born with a need to be loved – and never outgrows it."

- Frank A. Clark

"Children learn how to make good decisions by making decisions, not by following directions."

- Alfie Kohn

"We keep thinking as adults that we need to control the way they do things. I wish we’d get out of that. They know how to play, they know how to structure their own play – they need that time to grow responsibly."

- Debbie Rhea

"The most important period of life is not the age of university studies, but the first one, the period from birth to the age of six."

- Maria Montessori

"Children learn more from what you are than what you teach."

- W.E.B. Du Bois

"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."

- Albert Einstein

"Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is."

- Yoda

"The real magic wand is the child’s own mind."

- Jose Ortega y Gasset

"Asking kids to meet target on standardized tests is like making them meet a sales quota. Our kids are not commodities."

- K.L. Nielsen

"Children don’t know how to ask for what they don’t know they need. Their asking comes in the form of behaviour."

- Bonnie Harris

"Children cannot bounce off the walls if we take away the walls."

- Erin Kenny

"Schooling prepares children for jobs, yet getting a job is not what life is about. Life exists in the space between all we deem important."

- Vince Gowmon

"Sometimes the greatest PD is the teacher down the hall."

- Brian Aspinall

"A lot of what we do with children is well intentioned interference."

- Niki Buchan

"Good teachers are those who know how little they know. Bad teachers are those who think they know more than they don’t know."

- R. Verdi

"The activities that are the easiest, cheapest, and most fun to do – such as singing, playing games, reading, storytelling, and just talking and listening – are also the best for child development."

- Jerome Singer

"Keep company mainly with teachers who uplift you."

- Robert John Meehan

"It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question."

- Decouvertes

"Being a full-time mother is one of the highest salaried jobs… since the payment is pure love."

- Mildred B. Vermont

"Perhaps if tearful little boys were comforted instead of shamed there wouldn’t be so many angry men struggling to express and empathize with emotions."

- Lelia Scholl

"While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about."

- Angela Schwindt

"Rather than books and lectures, nature itself is children’s best teacher."

- Coffey

"These people have learned not from books, but in the fields, in the wood, on the river bank."

- Anton Chekhov

"If a child is poor in math but good at tennis, most people would hire a math tutor.  I would rather hire a tennis coach."

- Deepak Chopra

"You don’t remember the times your dad held your handle bars. You remember the day he let go."

- Lenore Skenazy

"The moment I decided to follow instead of lead, I discovered the joys of becoming part of a small child’s world."

- Janet Gonzalez-Mena

"The soul is healed by being with children."

- Fyodor Dostoevsky

"We are raised in a culture that values expertise over exploration."

- Nina Wise

"The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you."

- BB King

"Be somebody who makes everybody feel like a somebody."

- Kid President

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up."

- Pablo Picasso

"A good teacher is like a candle—it consumes itself to light the way for others."

- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

"Music education opens doors that help children pass from school into the world around them—a world of work, culture, intellectual activity, and human involvement."

- Gerald Ford

"Education in music is most sovereign because more than anything else, rhythm and harmony find their way to the innermost soul and take strongest hold upon it."

- Plato

"The best teacher lodges an intent not in the mind but in the heart."

- Anne Michaels

"The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them."

- Sir William Lawrence Bragg

"Science is much more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking."

- Carl Sagan

"Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember. Involve me and I learn."

- Ancient Chinese Proverb

"Strong teachers don’t teach content: Google has content. Strong teaching connects learning in ways that inspire kids to learn more and strive for greatness."

- Eric Jensen

"Sometimes, it only takes a single teacher to turn a child’s life around. Some children will come to school today because of that teacher. Be that teacher. Every day."

- We Teach, Let’s Talk

"Nine-tenths of education is encouragement."

- Anatole France

"The only way to learn mathematics is to do mathematics."

- Paul Halmos

"Children don’t say, ‘I had a hard day. Can we talk?’ They say, ‘Will you play with me?’"

- Lawrence Cohen

"Art is not what you see, but what you make others see."

- Edgar Degas

"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."

- John Steinbeck

"One of a teacher’s most important jobs is to teach children how to think."

- Preschool Inspirations

"Mathematics is not about numbers, equations, computations, or algorithms: it is about understanding."

- William Paul Thurston

"Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity and is the torch which illuminates the world."

- Louis Pasteur

"The world needs all kinds of minds."

- Temple Grandin

"To give a child a mechanical toy is equivalent to playing for him"

- Walter Wood

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

- Lily Tomlin

"There needs to be a lot more emphasis on what a child CAN do instead of what they cannot do."

- Temple Grandin

"A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas."

- G.H. Hardy

"Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater."

- Albert Einstein

"If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?"

- Albert Einstein

"Let me love you a little more, before you’re not little anymore."

- Michelle Thevenot

"In every seed, there is the promise of a forest."

- Susan Jeffers

"When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice safe playpen. When they’re finished, I climb out."

- Erma Bombeck

"To be in your children’s memories tomorrow, you have to be in their lives today."

- Barbara Johnson

"Teachers who love teaching, teach children to love learning."

"When you love your class, your students just know."

- Unknown

"In a world where you can be anything, be kind."

"Teachers plant seeds of knowledge that grow forever."

- Unknown

"Only the brave choose to teach."

- Unknown

"To your students, you are a hero."

- Unknown

"All the small moments with your students … it’s all important."

- Unknown

"Teaching is the profession that teaches all the other professions."

"To teach science is to teach people to question, experiment, and wonder."

- Unknown

"A good education can change anyone. A good teacher can change everything!"

"Children learn more from who you are than what you teach."

"Teachers are those who help find strengths, wipe away tears, overpower demons and conquer fears."

"My teacher gave me the best gift of all… Believing in me!"

"The influence of a good teacher can never be erased."

"Every job has its ups and downs, but not every job can change a life."

- Unknown

"The art of teaching special education is the art of assisting discovery while embracing uniqueness."

- Unknown

"Teaching math is not just teaching math, it’s inspiring a mindset to solve problems."

- Unknown

"The trick to having happy students is to first be happy yourself."

- Unknown

"Teaching art is not just about skills, it’s about instilling the courage to break the rules."

- Unknown

"You are a great teacher."

- Unknown

"The best teachers are those who show you where to look."

- Unknown

"Teaching English is about not only imparting language but also sharing culture and human connection."

- Unknown

"Be awesome, be amazing, be you."

"Be the leader in a school of fish."

"Do what you love."

- Unknown

"It starts on the inside."

- Unknown

"Not all superheros wear capes—some have teaching degrees."

- Unknown

"Behind every successful person is a substantial amount of coffee and a good teacher."

- Unknown

"I'm just a teacher standing in front of my class ..."

- Unknown

"May your coffee be strong and your students be calm."

- Unknown

"I wasn’t born to just teach. I was born to inspire others, to change people, and to never give up; even when faced with challenges that seem impossible."

- Anonymous

"Every child is gifted. They just unwrap their packages at different times."

"Teachers plant seeds that grow forever."

"Do not educate your child to be rich. Educate him to be happy, so that when he grows up he knows the value of things not the price."

"The teacher and the taught create the teaching."

"Those things you learn without joy you will forget easily."

"To raise a child who is comfortable enough to leave you means you’ve done your job. They are not ours to keep, but to teach how to soar on their own."

"Parenthood is about raising and celebrating the child you have, not the child you thought you’d have. It’s about understanding your child is exactly the person they are supposed to be. And, if you’re lucky, they might be the teacher who turns you into the person you’re supposed to be."

"It takes a big heart to shape little minds."

"I am a preschooler. I am not made to sit still."

- Anonymous

"To teach is to touch a life forever."

"Teachers plant the seeds of knowledge that will grow forever."

- Unknown

"A teacher takes a hand, opens a mind, and touches a heart."

- Unknown

"Children are great imitators. So give them something great to imitate."

"Every child is a different kind of flower, and all together, they make this world a beautiful garden."

- Unknown

"When you are born into a world where you don’t fit in, it’s because you were born to help create a new one."

- Anonymous