100 Inspirational Quotes Every Teacher Should Know

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

- William A. Ward

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

- Albert Einstein

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

- Brad Henry

"I touch the future. I teach."

- Christa McAuliffe

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

- Ann Lieberman

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

- Todd Whitaker

"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

"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

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

- Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

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

- Dalai Lama

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

- Malcolm X

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

- Solomon Ortiz

"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

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

- Kij Johnson

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

- Guy Kawasaki

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

- Malala Yousafzai

"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 they can possibly be."

- Rita Pierson

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

- Phil Collins

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

- Jim Henson

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

- Bob Talbert

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

- Malcolm X

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

- Josef Albers

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

- Alexander the Great

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

- Nelson Mandela

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

- Cicero

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

- William Butler Yeats

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

- Barack Obama

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

- Jeffrey R. Holland

"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

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

- Maria Montessori

"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

"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

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

- Aristotle

"Teach the children so it will not be necessary to teach the adults."

- Abraham Lincoln

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

- William Arthur Ward

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

- Aristotle

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

- Mark Van Doren

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

- Ever Garrison

"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

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

- Benjamin Franklin

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

- Socrates

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

- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

"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

"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

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

- Malala Yousafzai

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

- O. Fred Donaldson

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

- Urie Bronfenbrenner

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

- John Dewey

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

- Rainn Wilson

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

- Michael Morpurgo

"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

"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

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

- Helen Caldicott

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

- Chinese Proverb

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

- Maya Angelou

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

- Anonymous

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

- Joyce Meyer

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

- Dr. Seuss

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

- Robert Frost

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

- Henry Adams

"Don’t just teach your children to read, teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything!"

- George Carlin

"If you fell down yesterday, stand up today."

- H.G. Wells

"We can’t help everyone, but everyone can help someone."

- Ronald Reagan

"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

- Henry David Thoreau

"Real learning comes about when the competitive spirit has ceased."

- Jiddu Krishnamurti

"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

"The world needs all kinds of minds."

- Temple Grandin

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

- Lily Tomlin

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

- Thomas A. Edison

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

- Thomas Carruthers

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

- John Strachan

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

- J.D. Salinger

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

- Paul Halmos

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

- C. S. Lewis

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

- Barbara Colorose

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

- Brian Aspinall

"We never know which lives we influence, or when or why."

- Stephen King

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world."

- Anne Frank

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

- B.B. King

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

- Max Forman

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

- H. L. Mencken

"Keep company mainly with teachers who uplift you."

- Robert John Meehan

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

- George Bernard Shaw

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

- Karl Menninger

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

- Margaret Mead

"The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away."

- Pablo Picasso

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

- Rick Smith

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

- Confucius

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

- Aaron Bacall

"I wasn’t born to “just teach.”"

- Author Unknown

"Lessons on kindness are just as important as academic ones."

- Author Unknown

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

- Albert Einstein

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

- George Evans

"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

"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

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

- Paulo Coelho

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

- Maya Angelou

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

- John Dewey

"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

"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

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

- Joseph Addison

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

- Japanese Proverb

"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

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

- Pablo Picasso

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

- Edgar Degas

"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

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

- F. Sionil Jose

"I’m just a teacher standing in front of my class …"

- Author Unknown

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

- Louis Pasteur

"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

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

- Nicholas A. Ferroni

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

- Gail Godwin

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

- Ally Carter

"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

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

- Heidi McDonald

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

- Kid President

"Like a ~~boss~~ teacher."

- Author Unknown

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

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

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

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

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

- Unknown

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

"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."

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

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

- Unknown

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

"It starts on the inside."

- Unknown

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

- Unknown

"Be awesome, be amazing, be you."

"Only the brave choose to teach."

- Unknown

"To your students, you are a hero."

- Unknown

"Be the leader in a school of fish."

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

- Unknown

"Teachers plant seeds of knowledge that grow forever."

- Unknown

"You are a great teacher."

- Unknown

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

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

- Unknown

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

- Unknown

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

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

- Unknown

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

- Unknown

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

- Unknown

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

- Unknown

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

- Unknown

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

- Unknown

"Do what you love."

- Unknown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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