“The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-trust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciples.”
A good teacher changes lives, often without realizing it until years later. These quotes honor educators — their patience, dedication, creativity, and the underappreciated truth that teaching is one of the most demanding and important professions there is.
“I would suggest that teachers show their students concrete examples of the negative effects of the actions that gangsta rappers glorify.”
“The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-trust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciples.”
“It's the teacher that makes the difference, not the classroom.”
“To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.”
“I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.”
“It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, by relating that we observe, by affirming that we examine, by showing that we look, by writing that we think, by pumping that we draw water into the well.”
“My grandmother was a teacher, my sister was a teacher, my daughter was a teacher and is now a superintendent in northern California, and my son-in-law is a high school principal. I am surrounded.”
“The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without his teacher.”
“Children are already accustomed to a world that moves faster and is more exciting than anything a teacher in front of a classroom can do.”
“Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something that neither their teacher nor they know.”
“Only one person in a million becomes enlightened without a teacher's help.”
“I could undertake to be an efficient pupil if it were possible to find an efficient teacher.”
“We spend the first twelve months of our children's lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve telling them to sit down and shut up.”
“I got picked on a lot, even by teachers too. I liked to listen to musicals and bake, and my homeroom teacher found out and mocked me in front of the whole class for baking.”
“The five steps in teaching an employee new skills are preparation, explanation, showing, observation and supervision.”
“I wanted to be a teacher.”