Inspiring Wisdom: A Curated Collection of Inspirational Quotes About Teachers and Students

"I touch the future. I teach."

- Christa McAuliffe

"A teacher affects eternity; he [or she] can never tell where his influence stops."

- Henry B. Adams

"[Kids] don't remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are."

- Jim Henson

"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn."

- Benjamin Franklin

"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 Pierson

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

- William A. Ward

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

- Nelson Mandela

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

- William Butler Yeats

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

- Stephen Hawking

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

- Malala Yousafzai

"The influence of teachers extends beyond the classroom, well into the future."

- F. Sionil Jose

"Teaching is a very noble profession that shapes the character, caliber, and future of an individual. If people remember me as a good teacher, that will be the biggest honor for me."

- P. J. Abdul Kalam

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

- Malcolm X

"Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself."

- John Dewey

"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

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

- Margaret Mead

"Education is the key to success in life, and teachers make a lasting impact in the lives of their students."

- Solomon Ortiz

"If kids come to us from strong, healthy, functioning families, it makes our job easier. Our job is more critical if they do not come to us from strong, healthy, functioning families."

- Barbara Colorose

"When educating the minds of our youth, we must not forget to educate their hearts."

- Dalai Lama

"They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel."

- Carl W. Buechner

"It is the teacher that makes the difference. Not the classroom."

- Michael Morpurgo

"Everyone who remembers his own education remembers teachers, not methods and techniques. The teacher is the heart of the education system."

- Sidney Hook

"Great teachers empathize with kids, respect them, and believe that each one has something special that can be built upon."

- Ann Lieberman

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

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

- Lady Bird Johnson

"If you have to put someone on a pedestal, put teachers. They are society’s heroes."

- Guy Kawasaki

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

- Henry Adams

"A good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination, and instill a love of learning."

- Brad Henry

"Teachers can change lives with just the right mix of chalk and challenges."

- Joyce Meyer

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

- Karl Menninger

"Give me a fish, and I eat for a day. Teach me to fish, and I eat for a lifetime."

- Chinese Proverb

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

- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

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

- Ever Garrison

"I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well."

- Alexander the Great

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

- Rainn Wilson

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

- Nelson Mandela

"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

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

- Michael Morpurgo

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

- Barack Obama

"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

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

- Kij Johnson

"The most important function of education at any level is to develop the personality of the individual and the significance of his life to himself and to others. This is the basic architecture of a life; the rest is ornamentation and decoration of the structure."

- Grayson Kirk

"No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, kindness, and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure."

- Emma Goldman

"The object of teaching a child is to enable him [or her] to get along without his [or her] teacher."

- Elbert Hubbard

"Any genuine teaching will result, if successful, in someone’s knowing how to bring about a better condition of things than existed earlier."

- John Dewey

"The ability to think straight, some knowledge of the past, some vision of the future, some skill to do useful service, some urge to fit that service into the well-being of the community -- these are the most vital things education must try to produce."

- Virginia Gildersleeve

"Teachers can change lives with the right mix of chalk and challenges."

- Joyce Meyer

"The future of the world is in my classroom today, a future with the potential for good or bad... Several future presidents are learning from me today; so are the great writers of the next decades, and so are all the so-called ordinary people who will make the decisions in a democracy."

- Ivan Welton Fitzwater

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

- Bob Talbert

"When the untapped potential of a student meets the liberating art of a teacher, a miracle unfolds."

- Mary Hatwood Futrell

"Teaching is the essential profession, the one that makes all professions possible."

- David Haselkorn

"What greater or better gift can we offer the republic than to teach and instruct our youth?"

- Cicero

"Teachers, I believe, are the most responsible and important members of society because their professional efforts affect the fate of the earth."

- Helen Caldicott

"You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think."

- A.A. Milne

"Learn from yesterday. Live for today. Hope for tomorrow."

- Albert Einstein

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

- Dr. Seuss

"Teaching is more than imparting knowledge; it is inspiring change. Learning is more than absorbing facts; it is acquiring understanding."

- William Arthur Ward

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

- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

"Teachers can open the door, but you must enter it yourself."

- Chinese Proverb

"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

"Good teaching must be slow enough so that it is not confusing, and fast enough so that it is not boring."

- Sydney J. Harris

"In an effective classroom, students should not only know what they are doing, they should also know why and how."

- Harry Wong

"The man who does not read books has no advantage over the one who cannot read them."

- Mark Twain

"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

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

- Rudolf Steiner

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

- Albert Einstein

"What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child."

- George Bernard Shaw

"The teacher’s task is to initiate the learning process and then get out of the way."

- John Warren

"In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day’s work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years."

- Jacques Barzun

"The greatest use of a life is to spend it for something that will outlast it."

- William James

"I cannot teach anybody anything; I can only make them think."

- Socrates

"Teachers, who educate children, deserve more honor than parents, who merely gave them birth; for the latter provided mere life, while the former ensured a good life."

- Aristotle

"What greater joy can a teacher feel than to witness a child’s success?"

- Michelle L. Graham

"The best education is not given to students; it is drawn out of them."

- Gerald Belcher

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

- Albert Einstein

"Let us remember: One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world."

- Malala Yousafzai

"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 which he finds it hard to answer."

- Alice Wellington Rollins

"It must be remembered that the purpose of education is not to fill the minds of students with facts...it is to teach them to think, if that is possible, and always to think for themselves."

- Robert Hutchins

"Effective teaching may be the hardest job there is."

- William Glasser

"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

"Education...is a painful, continual, and difficult work to be done in kindness, by watching, by warning...by praise, but above all, by example."

- John Ruskin

"The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be ignited."

- Plutarch

"Teachers are expected to reach unattainable goals with inadequate tools. The miracle is that at times they accomplish this impossible task."

- Haim Ginott

"We can, whenever and wherever we choose, successfully teach all children whose schooling is of interest to us. We already know more than we need to know in order to do that. Whether or not we do it must finally depend on how we feel about the fact we haven't so far."

- Ron Edmonds

"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

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

- Mark van Doren

"Teaching is the perpetual end and office of all things. Teaching, instruction is the main design that shines through the sky and earth."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards; curiosity itself can be vivid and wholesome only in proportion as the mind is contented and happy."

- Anatole France

"The best way to predict your future is to create it."

- Peter Drucker

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"One of the beauties of teaching is that there is no limit to one’s growth as a teacher, just as there is no knowing beforehand how much your students can learn."

- Herbert Kohl

"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

"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 that connects the will to know with the will to become."

- Bell Hooks

"Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one."

- Malcolm Forbes

"Among the many purposes of schooling, four stand out to us as having special moral value: to love and care, to serve, to empower and, of course, to learn."

- Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan

"Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater."

- Gail Godwin

"Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do."

- John R. Wooden

"A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new."

- Albert Einstein

"Never let the fear of striking out stop you from playing the game."

- Babe Ruth

"You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great."

- Zig Ziglar

"The expert in anything was once a beginner."

- Helen Hayes

"The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing."

- Walt Disney

"There are no shortcuts to any place worth going."

- Beverly Sills

"I think it’s possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary."

- Elon Musk

"Genius is 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration."

- Thomas Edison

"Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going."

- Jim Ryun

"Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated."

- R Collier

"He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever."

- Chinese Proverb

"Teaching is an instinctual art, mindful of potential, craving of realizations, a pausing, seamless process."

- A. Bartlett Giamatti

"A pro is someone who can do great work when he doesn't feel like it."

- Alistair Cook

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

- Jacques Barzun

"Teaching is the only major occupation...for which we have not developed tools that make an average person capable of competence and performance. In teaching we rely on the naturals, the ones who somehow know how to teach."

- Peter Drucker

"Teaching is the greatest act of optimism."

- Colleen Wilcox

"Teaching is truth mediated by personality."

- Phyllis Brooks

"Benevolence alone will not make a teacher, nor will learning alone do it. The gift of teaching is a peculiar talent, and implies a need and a craving in the teacher himself."

- John Jay Chapman

"Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher."

- Japanese Proverb

"What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul."

- Joseph Addison

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

- J.D. Salinger

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

- Confucius

"Nine-tenths of education is encouragement."

- Anatole France

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

- H. L. Mencken

"I am not a teacher, but an awakener."

- Robert Frost

"Sometimes the bravest and most important thing you can do is just show up."

- Brené Brown

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

- C. S. Lewis

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

- Phil Collins

"Those who know do. Those that understand, teach."

- Aristotle

"Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts."

- Winston Churchill

"You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."

- A.A. Milne

"Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game."

- Babe Ruth

"Being a new teacher is like trying to fly an airplane while building it."

- Rick Smith

"A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary."

- Thomas Carruthers

"If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you."

- Fred Devito

"I may not be there yet, but I am closer than I was yesterday."

- Misty Copeland

"Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right."

- Henry Ford

"To this end, the greatest asset of a school is the personality of the teacher."

- John Strachan

"If your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough."

- Muhammad Ali

"Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new."

- Augustine Og Mandino

"Your heart is slightly bigger than the average human heart, but that’s because you’re a teacher."

- Aaron Bacall

"Today a reader, tomorrow a leader."

- Margaret Fuller

"What office is there which involves more responsibility, which requires more qualifications, and which ought, therefore, to be more honorable, than that of teaching?"

- Harriet Martineau

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

- BB King

"Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers."

- Josef Albers

"Teachers are people who start things they never see finished, and for which they never get thanks until it is too late."

- Max Forman

"Thirty-one chances. Thirty-one futures, our futures. It’s an almost psychotic feeling, believing that part of their lives belongs to me. Everything they become, I also become. And everything about me, they helped to create."

- Esme Raji Codell

"You have to be odd to be No.1."

- Dr. Seuss

"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

"Set your goals high, and don’t stop till you get there."

- Bo Jackson

"If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn’t need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around."

- Jim Rohn

"None of us is as smart as all of us."

- Ken Blanchard

"The work of a teacher -- exhausting, complex, idiosyncratic, never twice the same -- is at its heart an ethical enterprise. Teaching is the vocation of vocations."

- William Ayres

"Procrastination makes easy things hard and hard things harder."

- Mason Cooley

"Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theater."

- Gail Godwin

"Learn as if you will live forever, live like you will die tomorrow."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"When you change your thoughts, remember to also change your world."

- Norman Vincent Peale

"The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same."

- Colin R. Davis

"Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today."

- Will Rogers

"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward."

- Vernon Sanders Law

"Either you run the day or the day runs you."

- Jim Rohn

"When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too."

- Paulo Coelho

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

- Kid President

"Educators are the only people who lose sleep over other people’s kids."

- Nicholas A. Ferroni

"Being a teacher is a lot like being a rock star."

- Heidi McDonald

"The older I got, the smarter my teachers became."

- Ally Carter

"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."

- Gandalf

"You carry the passport to your own happiness."

- Diane von Furstenberg

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress."

- Frederick Douglass

"No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world."

- Robin Williams

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started."

- Mark Twain

"Only surround yourself with people who will lift you higher."

- Oprah Winfrey

"There’s a way to do it better. Find it."

- Thomas Edison

"The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary."

- Vidal Sassoon

"One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is a vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child."

- Carl Jung

"Just one small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day."

- Dalai Lama

"If you’re not positive energy, you’re negative energy."

- Mark Cuban

"Live out of your imagination, not your history."

- Stephen Covey

"No matter what accomplishments you achieve, somebody helped you."

- Althea Gibson

"Hustle beats talent when talent doesn’t hustle."

- Ross Simmonds

"Everything you’ve ever wanted is sitting on the other side of fear."

- George Addair

"Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can."

- Arthur Ashe

"It is also about opening the child’s eyes to the needs and rights of others."

- Dalai Lama

"If you can read this, thank a teacher."

- American Proverb

"A teacher presents the past, reveals the present, and creates the future."

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

"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."

"Students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care."

- Anonymous

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

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

"In our class we don’t do easy. We make easy happen through hard work and learning."

"You’re here. You take up space. You matter."

"Your voice matters."

"Everything you don’t know is something you can learn."

"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."

"Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

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

"Mistakes help me learn better."

"From small beginnings come great things."

"Teacher: A person who helps you solve problems you’d never have without them."

"To survive as a teacher you need 3 bones: a wishbone, a backbone, and a funny bone."

"Never bend your head. Hold it high. Look the world in the eye."

"Let’s root for each other and watch each other grow."

"To have good friends, you need to be one."

"Say what you mean but don’t say it mean."

"You belong here."

"You will never regret being kind."

"Look closely at the present you are constructing. It should look like the future you are dreaming."

"Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well."

"It doesn’t matter what others are doing, it matters what _you_ are doing."

"Wake up and be awesome."

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

"Be the leader in a school of fish."

"Be a pineapple. Stand tall, wear a crown, and be sweet on the inside."

"If the words you spoke appeared on your skin, would you still be beautiful?"

"Even if hate has a bullhorn, love is louder."

"Reading is like breathing in, writing is like breathing out."

"Kind is the new cool."

"Make today so awesome yesterday is jealous."

"Look with kindness and you will find wonder."

"Be awesome, be amazing, be you."

"You are loved."

"Broken crayons still color."

"Throw kindness around like confetti."

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

- Unknown

"Good teachers are the ones who can challenge young minds without losing their own."

"We may all be different fish, but at this school we swim together."

"Be the reason someone smiles today."

"You’re going to rattle the stars, you are."

"It’s a good day for a good day."

"It’s kind of fun to do the impossible."

"No one is perfect—that’s why pencils have erasers."

"The classroom should be an entrance into the world, not an escape from it."

"Everything comes to he who hustles while he waits."

"If we value all readers, we must value all reading."

"Teaching is the one profession that creates all other professions."

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

"Worry is a misuse of imagination."

"Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance."

"A year from now, you will wish you had started today."

"Don’t worry about failure … you only have to be right once."

"The earth without art is just eh."

"Teaching: the only profession where you steal things from home and bring them to work."

"Misfits we may be, but we will rewrite history."

"Teaching is a walk in the park. If that park is Jurassic park."

"There are three good reasons to be a teacher –June, July, and August."

"Today a reader. Tomorrow a leader."

"Teachers are like candles — they consume themselves to light the way for others."

"Inspiring minds, touching hearts, shaping futures."

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