50 Inspirational Teaching Quotes That Ignite Passion and Purpose

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

- John Dewey

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

- Aristotle

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

- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

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

- Malcolm X

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

- Mark van Doren

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

- William Butler Yeats

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

- Nelson Mandela

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

- Albert Einstein

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

- Guy Kawasaki

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

- Dalai Lama

"Teaching is the greatest act of optimism."

- Colleen Wilcox

"I touch the future. I teach."

- Christa McAuliffe

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

- Rainn Wilson

"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

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

- Bob Talbert

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

- Malala Yousafzai

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

- Robert Frost

"Nine-tenths of education is encouragement."

- Anatole France

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

- F. Sionil Jose

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

- Aristotle

"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 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

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

- Josef Albers

"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

"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

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

- Henry Adams

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

- C. S. Lewis

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

- John Strachan

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

- Brad Henry

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

- Helen Caldicott

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

- Max Forman

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

- Joyce Meyer

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

- H. L. Mencken

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

- Chinese Proverb

"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

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

- Cicero

"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

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

- George Carlin

"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

"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

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

- Thomas A. Edison

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

- Dr. Seuss

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

- Todd Whitaker

"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

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

- Kij Johnson

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

- Socrates

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

- Confucius

"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

"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

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

- Japanese Proverb

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

- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

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

- William Arthur Ward

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

- Margaret Mead

"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

"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

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

- George Bernard Shaw

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

- Bob Talbert

"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

"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

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

- Maya Angelou

"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

"one teacher can change the world."

- Malala Yousafzai

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

- Michael Morpurgo

"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

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

- Benjamin Franklin

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

- Louis Pasteur

"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

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

- Scott Hayden

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

- Darwin D. Martin

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

- Nicholas A. Ferroni

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

- Joseph Addison

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

- Paul Halmos

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

- Paulo Coelho

"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

"To teach is to learn twice over."

- Joseph Joubert

"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

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

- Abraham Lincoln

"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

"Education is not to reform students or amuse them, or to make them expert technicians. It is to unsettle their minds, widen their horizons, inflame their intellects, teach them to think straight, if possible."

- Robert M. Hutchins

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

- Maria Montessori

"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

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

- Urie Bronfenbrenner

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

- O. Fred Donaldson

"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

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

- BB King

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

- Guy Kawasaki

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

- Sidney Hook

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

- Albert Einstein

"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

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

- William Paul Thurston

"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

"Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime."

- Chinese Proverb

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

- Jeffrey R. Holland

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

- George Evans

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

- Dorothea Dix

"The world needs all kinds of minds."

- Temple Grandin

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

- Brian Aspinall

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

- Aaron Bacall

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

- Ronald Reagan

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

- Joyce Meyer

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

- Lily Tomlin

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

- H.G. Wells

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

- Anne Frank

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

- Lady Bird Johnson

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

- Jiddu Krishnamurti

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

- J.D. Salinger

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

- Thomas Carruthers

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

- Gail Godwin

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

- Nicholas A. Ferroni

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

- Pablo Picasso

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

- Jim Henson

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

- Stephen King

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

- American Proverb

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

- Ally Carter

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

- Rick Smith

"Keep company mainly with teachers who uplift you."

- Robert John Meehan

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

- Heidi McDonald

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

- Kid President

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

- Author Unknown

"I wasn’t born to “just teach.”"

- Author Unknown

"Like a ~~boss~~ teacher."

- Author Unknown

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

- Author Unknown

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

- Anonymous

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Unknown

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

- Unknown

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

- Unknown

"Be awesome, be amazing, be you."

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

- Unknown

"Only the brave choose to teach."

- Unknown

"To your students, you are a hero."

- Unknown

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

"Be the leader in a school of fish."

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

"Teachers plant seeds of knowledge that grow forever."

- 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

"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

"Do what you love."

- Unknown

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

- Unknown

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

- Unknown

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

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

"You are a great teacher."

- Unknown

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

- Unknown

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

- Unknown

"It starts on the inside."

- Unknown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Unknown