100 Inspirational Teacher Quotes to Say Thank You and Celebrate Educators

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

- Aristotle

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

- Yawar Baig

"Teaching is not just a job. It is a human service, and it must be thought of as a mission."

- Dr. Ralph Tyler

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

- Michael Morpurgo

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

- Gail Godwin

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

- Scott Hayden

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

- Jacques Barzun

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

- William Arthur Ward

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

- Chinese Proverb

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

- A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

"The teacher … must have a kind of faith that the child will reveal himself through work."

- Maria Montessori

"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

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

- Malala Yousafzai

"Teachers appreciate being appreciated, for teacher appreciation is their highest award."

- William Prince

"Teachers teach because they care. Teaching young people is what they do best. It requires long hours, patience, and care."

- Horace Mann

"The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself."

- Edward Bulwer-Lytton

"The art of teaching is to teach, to teach well, and to teach even better."

- Henri Frederic Amiel

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

- Jacques Barzun

"In order to be an effective teacher, you have to love your students as human beings, and you have to love teaching."

- Maribeth Sublette

"Teacher appreciation makes the world of education go around."

- Helen Peters

"One good teacher in a lifetime may sometimes change a delinquent into a solid citizen."

- Philip Wylie

"Good teachers know how to bring out the best in students."

- Charles Kuralt

"He who opens a school door closes a prison."

- Victor Hugo

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

- John Dewey

"Teaching is not about answers but about questions; not about knowing but about learning; not about the destination but about the journey."

- Glenn Doman

"When we strive to become better teachers than we are, everyone in our classroom becomes better too."

- Robert John Meehan

"A teacher’s job is to take a bunch of live wires and see that they are well-grounded."

- D. Martin

"The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind."

- Kahlil Gibran

"Teaching is the only major occupation of man for which we have not yet developed tools that make an average person capable of competence and performance."

- Peter Drucker

"I touch the future. I teach."

- Christa McAuliffe

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

- Malala Yousafzai

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

- Brad Henry

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

- Malcolm X

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

- Benjamin Franklin

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

- Brad Henry

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

- Brad Henry

"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

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

- Joyce Meyer

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

- Dalai Lama

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

- Ever Garrison

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

- Helen Caldicott

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

- Carl W. Buechner

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

- Karl Menninger

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

- Japanese Proverb

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

- Phil Collins

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

- H. L. Mencken

"The duties of a teacher are neither few nor small, but they elevate the mind and give energy to the character."

- Dorothea Dix

"Teaching is the greatest act of optimism."

- Colleen Wilcox

"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

"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

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

- C. S. Lewis

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

- Chinese Proverb

"The fact that you worry about being a good teacher, means that you already are one."

- Jodi Picoult

"Being a teacher is not what I do, it's who I am."

- Jill Biden

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

- Solomon Ortiz

"When you teach your son, you teach your son’s son."

- The Talmud

"The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life."

- Plato

"Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing."

- Theodore Roosevelt

"Be a wonderful role model because you will be the window through which many children will see their future."

- Thomas McKinnon

"Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well."

- Voltaire

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

- F. Sionil Jose

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

- Joyce Meyer

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

- Jim Henson

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

- Aristotle

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

- Michael Morpurgo

"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

"In order to be an effective teacher you have to love your students as human beings and you have to love teaching."

- Maribeth Sublette

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

- Thomas Carruthers

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

- Carl Jung

"I can no other answer make but thanks, and thanks, and ever thanks…"

- William Shakespeare

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

- Guy Kawasaki

"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

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

- Robert Frost

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

- Cicero

"Teaching is a calling too. And I've always thought that teachers in their way are holy—angels leading their flocks out of the darkness."

- Jeannette Walls

"Our fingerprints don't fade from the lives we touch."

- Judy Blume

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

- Alexandra K. Trenfor

"All students can learn and succeed, but not in the same way and not in the same day."

- William G. Spady

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

- Aaron Bacall

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

- Rick Smith

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

- Gail Godwin

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

- Max Forman

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

- Nicholas A. Ferroni

"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

"There is no recipe to be a great teacher, that's what is unique about them."

- Robert Sternberg

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

- Ally Carter

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

- John Strachan

"Being able to help someone learn something is a talent."

- Margaret Riel

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

- Lily Tomlin

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

- Heidi McDonald

"If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."

- Wayne Dyer

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

- W.B. Yeats

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

- Ann Lieberman

"Anyone who does anything to help a child in his life is a hero to me."

- Fred Rogers

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

- Bob Talbert

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

- Confucius

"The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives."

- Robert M. Hutchins

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

- BB King

"What we learn with pleasure we never forget."

- Alfred Mercier

"To teach is to learn twice."

- Joseph Joubert

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

- Alexandra K. Trenfor

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

- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

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

- American Proverb

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

- Henry Adams

"It’s easy to make a buck. It’s a lot tougher to make a difference."

- Tom Brokaw

"Nine-tenths of education is encouragement."

- Anatole France

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

- Josef Albers

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

- Sidney Hook

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

- Alexander the Great

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

- Lady Bird Johnson

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

- Mark van Doren

"Not all superheroes wear capes; some have teaching degrees."

- Unknown

"In the classroom, you’re not just a teacher; you’re a dream builder."

- Unknown

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

- Unknown

"Don’t judge a teacher until you’ve walked a mile in her shoes."

- Unknown

"The best teachers teach from the heart, not from the book."

"Without teachers, life would have no class."

- Unknown

"A truly amazing teacher is hard to find, difficult to part with, and impossible to forget."

- Unknown

"A teacher nourishes the soul of a child for a lifetime."

- Unknown

"A truly special teacher is very wise and sees tomorrow in every child’s eyes."

- Unknown

"A teacher’s purpose is not to create students in his own image, but to develop students who can create their own image."

- Unknown

"Teachers are the builders of tomorrow."

- Unknown

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

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

"Cheers to all of the teachers who give out pencils every single day who know that they’ll never get them back."

- Unknown

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

- Anonymous

"The greatest sign of success for a teacher… is to be able to say, ‘The children are now working as if I did not exist.’"

"Most of us end up with no more than five or six people who remember us. Teachers have thousands of people who remember them for the rest of their lives."

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

- Unknown

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

"What a teacher writes on the blackboard of life can never be erased."

"What a gift for any teacher to see the students smile and live up to their potential. That’s the reward. That’s humbling to be a witness to something like that."

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

"A mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions."

"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."

"Genius without education is like silver in the mine."

"One test of the correctness of educational procedure is the happiness of the child."

"If you want to be successful, it’s just this simple. Know what you are doing. Love what you are doing. And believe in what you are doing."

"Students don’t deserve mediocre teachers… Students deserve great teachers."

"Not all superheroes have capes, some have Teaching Degrees."

"My teacher thought I was smarter than I was – so I was."

"The task of the excellent teacher is to stimulate ‘apparently ordinary’ people to unusual effort. The tough problem is not in identifying winners: it is in making winners out of ordinary people."

"The great teacher is not the man who supplies the most facts, but the one in whose presence we become different people."

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

- Unknown

"I think the teaching profession contributes more to the future of our society than any other single profession."

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

"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."

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