“When people lack teachers, their tendencies are not corrected when they do not have ritual and moral principles, then their lawlessness is not controlled.”
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.
“Every man who rises above the common level has received two educations: the first from his teachers the second, more personal and important, from himself.”
“When people lack teachers, their tendencies are not corrected when they do not have ritual and moral principles, then their lawlessness is not controlled.”
“He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.”
“He was the editor of our paper. He created the publishing house in Hebrew. He was - I wouldn't say the 'guru' - but really he was our teacher and a most respected man. I wrote for the paper of the youth movement.”
“I'm a freak, everything has to be totally flat when I play. Ed Will, my jazz teacher, set up everything completely flat, and then you'd tilt your snare drum away from you, so I do that too. So my snare tilts away from me.”
“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.”
“I was a mimic when I was a child. I mimicked the teacher and made friends that way, actually. That was a very subversive activity, because I was a goody-goody who never got in trouble. But if I went off in the corner and mimicked the teacher, people loved it.”
“You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.”
“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.”
“I wanted to be an English teacher. I wanted to do it for the corduroy jackets with patches on the side. When I got to college, as I was walking across campus one day, I ripped off a little flyer for this sketch-comedy group. It ended up being one of the greatest things I've ever done.”
“As a teacher, as a propagandist, Mr. Shaw is no good at all, even in his own generation. But as a personality, he is immortal.”
“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.”
“A self-taught man usually has a poor teacher and a worse student.”
“If a teacher does not involve himself, his values, his commitments, in the course of discussion, why should the students?”
“Tragedy is a hell of a teacher. It's much too strict, but it's a hell of a teacher.”
“Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something that neither their teacher nor they know.”