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To be a schoolmaster is next to being a king. Do you reckon it a mean employment to imbue the minds of your fellow-citizens in their earliest years with the best Letters and with the love of Christ, and to return them to their country honest and virtuous men? In the opinion of fools it is a humble task, but in fact it is the noblest of occupations. ~ Erasmus
Bad teachers do not touch me; the great ones never leave me. ~ Pat Conroy
A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. ~ Henry Adams
My advocacy for various things will startle some readers, since people often think professors should stay in their ivory towers and “be above it all” (or at least “out of it”). But I think, to the contrary, that professors have an obligation to speak what they believe to be the truth, especially when they see important social values such as freedom and equality under attack. ~ Bob Altemeyer
This is the big reason for tenure. It pays a free society in the long run to safeguard teachers so they can say whatever they think is true without fear of losing their jobs. It’s an implicit part of our role to profess the truth, as best we know it. That’s why we’re called profess-ors. ~ Bob Altemeyer
Who dares to teach must never cease to learn. ~ John Cotton Dana
It is the special task of teachers to foster those habits of open-mindedness and critical inquiry which alone make for responsible citizens, who, in turn, make possible an enlightened and effective public opinion. Teachers must fulfill their function by precept and practice, by the very atmosphere which they generate; they must be exemplars of open-mindedness and free inquiry. They cannot carry out their noble task if the conditions for the practice of a responsible and critical mind are denied to them. ~ Felix Frankfurter
When I first began teaching, I visited with a former teacher who I respected greatly. I asked him for some advice. He responded without hesitation, "A good teacher must love his students." "Love?" I queried. "Yes, love. When you come to care about each student as your very own child, then you'll become a great teacher." ~ Jeffrey Glanz

Teachers or schoolteachers are people who provide education for pupils (children) and students (adults). The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education.

CONTENT : A - F , G - L , M - R , S - Z , Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations, See also , External links

Quotes

Quotes are arranged alphabetically by author

A - F

  • One-time member of the school, come here to me, and let me explain to you what my teacher revealed.
    Like you, I was once a youth and had a mentor. The teacher assigned a task to me -- it was man's work. Like a springing reed, I leapt up and put myself to work. I did not depart from my teacher's instructions, and I did not start doing things on my own initiative. My mentor was delighted with my work on the assignment. He rejoiced that I was humble before him and he spoke in my favour.
    I just did whatever he outlined for me -- everything was always in its place. Only a fool would have deviated from his instructions. He guided my hand on the clay and kept me on the right path. He made me eloquent with words and gave me advice. He focused my eyes on the rules which guide a man with a task: zeal is proper for a task, time-wasting is taboo; anyone who wastes time on his task is neglecting his task.
    He did not vaunt his knowledge: his words were modest. If he had vaunted his knowledge, people would have frowned. Do not waste time, do not rest at night -- get on with that work! Do not reject the pleasurable company of a mentor or his assistant: once you have come into contact with such great brains, you will make your own words more worthy. [...] There, I have recited to you what my teacher revealed, and you will not neglect it. You should pay attention -- taking it to heart will be to your benefit!
  • Raise your head now, you who were formerly a youth. You can turn your hand against any man, so act as is befitting. [...] Through you who offered prayers and so blessed me, who instilled instruction into my body as if I were consuming milk and butter, who showed his service to have been unceasing, I have experienced success and suffered no evil. The teachers, those learned men, should value you highly. [...] Your name will be hailed as honourable for its prominence. For your sweet songs even the cowherds will strive gloriously. For your sweet songs I too shall strive. [...] The teacher will bless you with a joyous heart. You who as a youth sat at my words have pleased my heart. Nisaba has placed in your hand the honour of being a teacher. For her, the fate determined for you will be changed and so you will be generously blessed. May she bless you with a joyous heart and free you from all despondency. [...] For your sweet songs even the cowherds will strive gloriously. For your sweet songs I too shall strive. [...] They should recognise that you are a practitioner of wisdom. The little fellows should enjoy like beer the sweetness of decorous words: experts bring light to dark places, they bring it to culs-de-sac and streets.
  • My school was a happy place. All of us who started our schooling there completed our studies till the eighth standard. I don't remember even a single person dropping out. These days, when i visit schools, both big and small, all across the country, i tell them that true quality does not come from a great building or great facilities or great advertisements. It happens when education is imparted with love by great teachers.
    • APJ Abdul Kalam, My Journey: Transforming Dreams into Actions, Rupa Publications, 2014.
  • Rarely will you meet anyone so jealous as a teacher. Year after year students tumble along like the waters of a river. They flow away, and only the teacher is left behind, like some deeply buried rock at the bottom of the current. Although he may tell others of his hopes, he doesn't dream of them himself. He thinks of himself as worthless and either falls into masochistic loneliness or, failing that, ultimately becomes suspicious and pious, forever denouncing the eccentricities of others. He longs so much for freedom and action that he can only hate people.
  • A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
    • Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, Ch. 20, "Failure".
  • My advocacy for various things will startle some readers, since people often think professors should stay in their ivory towers and “be above it all” (or at least “out of it”). But I think, to the contrary, that professors have an obligation to speak what they believe to be the truth, especially when they see important social values such as freedom and equality under attack. This is the big reason for tenure. It pays a free society in the long run to safeguard teachers so they can say whatever they think is true without fear of losing their jobs. It’s an implicit part of our role to profess the truth, as best we know it. That’s why we’re called profess-ors.
    • Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarians (2006), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 247
  • Philosophy teachers are teachers, i.e. intellectuals employed in a given education system and subject to that system, performing, as a mass, the social function of inculcating the 'values of the ruling ideology'. The fact that there may be a certain amount of 'play' in schools and other institutions which enables individual teachers to turn their teaching and reflection against these established 'values' does not change the mass effect of the philosophical teaching function. Philosophers are intellectuals and therefore petty bourgeois, subject as a mass to bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideology.
  • One thing that I really like about teaching is that you have to work very hard not to lose the respect of your students.
    • Tania Bruguera Art Is the Highest Form of Hope & Other Quotes by Artists by Phaidon (2016)
  • O ye! who teach the ingenious youth of nations,
    Holland, France, England, Germany or Spain,
    I pray ye flog them upon all occasions,
    It mends their morals, never mind the pain.
  • 'Tis pleasing to be school'd in a strange tongue
    By female lips and eyes—that is, I mean,
    When both the teacher and the taught are young,
    As was the case, at least, where I have been;
    They smile so when one's right; and when one's wrong
    They smile still more.
  • You seemed to be listening to me, not to find out useful information, but to try to catch me in a logical fallacy. This tells us all that you are used to being smarter than your teachers, and that you listen to them in order to catch them making mistakes and prove how smart you are to the other students. This is such a pointless, stupid way of listening to teachers that it is clear you are going to waste months of our time before you finally catch on that the only transaction that matters is a transfer of useful information from adults who possess it to children who do not, and that catching mistakes is a criminal misuse of time.
  • I developed The Great Teacher theory late in my freshman year. It was a cornerstone of the theory that great teachers had great personalities and that the greatest teachers had outrageous personalities. I did not like decorum or rectitude in a classroom; I preferred a highly oxygenated atmosphere, a climate of intemperance, rhetoric, and feverish melodrama. And I wanted my teachers to make me smart. A great teacher is my adversary, my conqueror, commissioned to chastise me. He leaves me tame and grateful for the new language he has purloined from other kings whose granaries are filled and whose libraries are famous. He tells me that teaching is the art of theft; knowing what to steal and from whom. Bad teachers do not touch me; the great ones never leave me. They ride with me during all my days, and I pass on to others what they have imparted to me. I exchange their handy gifts with strangers on trains, and I pretend the gifts are mine. I steal from the great teachers. And the truly wonderful thing about them is that they would applaud my theft, laugh at the thought of it, realizing that they had taught me their larcenous skills well.
    • Pat Conroy, The Lords of Discipline (1980), p. 271
  • [A good teacher] brings knowledge and his pupil into a vital relationship; and the object of teaching is to establish that relationship on an intelligible basis. This can only be done ... by appealing to two qualities which are at the bottom of all knowledge, curiosity and observation. They are born with us, every child naturally develops them, and it is the duty of the teacher to direct them to proper ends.
  • Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.
    • John Cotton Dana. In 1912 Dana, a Newark, New Jersey, librarian, was asked to supply a Latin quotation suitable for inscription on a new building at Newark State College (now Kean College of New Jersey), Union, New Jersey. Unable to find an appropriate quotation, Dana composed what became the college motto. The New York Times Book Review, March 5, 1967, p. 55.
  • To be a schoolmaster is next to being a king. Do you reckon it a mean employment to imbue the minds of your fellow-citizens in their earliest years with the best Letters and with the love of Christ, and to return them to their country honest and virtuous men? In the opinion of fools it is a humble task, but in fact it is the noblest of occupations.
  • Erasmus, Letter to Joanes Sapidus (c. 1581), The Epistles of Erasmus (1904), p. 235
  • Such an office demands an upright and incorruptible man, who would take delight in his pious work even without any pay, while a high salary and a position of dignity would attract the meanest characters.
  • Erasmus, Letter to Joanes Sapidus (c. 1581), The Epistles of Erasmus (1904), p. 236
  • D'ordinaire, ceux qui gouvernent les enfants ne leur pardonnent rien, et se pardonnent tout à eux-mêmes.
    • In general, those who govern children forgive nothing in them, but everything in themselves.
    • François Fénelon Traité de l'éducation des filles, ch. 5, cited from De l'éducation des filles, dialogues des morts et opuscules divers (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1857) p. 15; translation from Selections from the Writings of Fénelon (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, Little and Wilkins, 1829) p. 137. (1687).
  • The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards; and curiosity itself can be vivid and wholesome only in proportion as the mind is contented and happy.
    • Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (vol. 1 of The Works of Anatole France), trans. Lafcadio Hearn, part 2, chapter 4, June 6, 1860, p. 198 (1924).
  • The process of education has naturally enough been the basis of hope for the perdurance of our democracy on the part of all our great leaders, from Thomas Jefferson onwards. To regard teachers—in our entire educational system, from the primary grades to the university—as the priests of our democracy is therefore not to indulge in hyperbole. It is the special task of teachers to foster those habits of open-mindedness and critical inquiry which alone make for responsible citizens, who, in turn, make possible an enlightened and effective public opinion. Teachers must fulfill their function by precept and practice, by the very atmosphere which they generate; they must be exemplars of open-mindedness and free inquiry. They cannot carry out their noble task if the conditions for the practice of a responsible and critical mind are denied to them.

G - L

  • The function of the teacher, as we have just defined it, is naturally directed toward a twofold object, interior and exterior, depending upon whether it is applied to the truth the teacher meditates upon and contemplates within himself or to the listeners whom he is teaching.
  • Outside of that you have teachers who are increasingly deskilled through models of curricula that claim that objective assessments are all that matters, and that teachers just have to implement the assessments. So teachers are completely losing control over the conditions of their labor, they’re being abused, they’re not being paid properly, they’re losing their benefits, and their unions are being disseminated. This is a full-fledged attack. It’s an attack on one of the most important foundations of a democracy, it’s an attack on teachers, and it’s an attack on young people — particularly those who are marginalized by virtue of class, race, and ethnicity.
  • Not to keep from error, is the duty of the educator of men, but to guide the erring one, even to let him swill his error out of full cups — that is the wisdom of teachers. Whoever merely tastes of his error, will keep house with it for a long time, … but whoever drains it completely will have to get to know it.
  • Full well they laughed, with counterfeited glee,
    At all his jokes, for many a joke had he:
    Full well the busy whisper, circling round,
    Convey'd the dismal tidings when he frown'd.
  • Good teachers are enthusiastic. The number one quality of a good teacher is enthusiasm. Students often complain that their teacher is boring. Can you recall sitting in a class where the teacher was not enthusiastic, to say the least, about his or her work? Can you recall what a difference an enthusiastic teacher made? What about the same for teachers you've known? Enthusiasm demonstrates passion for one's work. When one is passionate one usually enjoys what he or she is doing and one usually succeeds. Moreover, such enthusiasm is inspiring. Consider some of the world's great leaders. I think you'll agree that two of the most important qualities they possess are energy and optimism. They inspire others to action.
    • Jeffrey Glanz, Teaching 101: Classroom Strategies for the Beginning Teacher (2004), p. 33
  • When I first began teaching, I visited with a former teacher who I respected greatly. I asked him for some advice. He responded without hesitation, "A good teacher must love his students." "Love?" I queried. "Yes, love. When you come to care about each student as your very own child, then you'll become a great teacher."
    • Jeffrey Glanz, Teaching 101: Classroom Strategies for the Beginning Teacher (2004), p. 131
  • Daily contact with some teachers is itself all-sided ethical education for the child without a spoken precept. Here, too, the real advantage of male over female teachers, especially for boys, is seen in their superior physical strength, which often, if highly estimated, gives real dignity and commands real respect, and especially in the unquestionably greater uniformity of their moods and their discipline.
    • Stanley Hall, Youth: its education, regimen and hygiene (available at gutenberg.org).
  • A boor cannot be sin-fearing, an ignoramus cannot be pious, a bashful one cannot learn, a short-tempered person cannot teach, nor does anyone who does much business grow wise.
  • My brethren, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment. For we all stumble in many things. If anyone does not stumble in word, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body.
  • The vices of our teachers are not to be imitated, their virtues are.
    • St. Jerome, Apology Against Rufinus, Book III, sec. 27
  • A teacher comes, they say, when you are ready. And if you ignore its presence, it will speak to you more loudly. But you have to be quiet to hear.
  • When you teach, it stimulates you; you're forced to crystallize your own thinking...you're forced to formalize your own theories so that you may communicate them to the students... you go back to your studio and think about this again.
    • Jacob Lawrence Artifacts: Fascinating Facts about Art, Artists, and the Art World by Phaidon (2022)
  • If you are truly serious about preparing your child for the future, don't teach him to subtract - teach him to deduct.
  • If you ask most teachers of science what their main goal is, they will probably say: for my students to understand the basic concepts of physics, chemistry, biology, or whatever other field is being studied. The critical words here are ‘understand’ and ‘concept’, and both of these terms assume a fundamentally psychological approach to learning... If we see the goals of science education in terms of what students will be able to do, and how they will be able to make sense of the world, rather than in terms of our speculations about what may be going on in their brains, then we need to see scientific learning as the acquisition of cultural tools and practices, as learning to participate in very specific and often specialized forms of human activity
  • It is the capitalist class that pays you, that feeds you, that puts the very clothes on your backs that you are wearing tonight. And in return you preach to your employers the brands of metaphysics that are especially acceptable to them; and the especially acceptable brands are acceptable because they do not menace the established order of society. ... You are sincere. You preach what you believe. There lies your strength and your value—to the capitalist class. But should you change your belief to something that menaces the established order, your preaching would be unacceptable to your employers, and you would be discharged. ... Your hands are soft with the work others have performed for you. Your stomachs are round with the plenitude of eating. ... And your minds are filled with doctrines that are buttresses of the established order. You are as much mercenaries (sincere mercenaries, I grant) as were the men of the Swiss Guard.
  • Docemus Docere
    • Longwood University motto, translates to English as "We Teach To Enlighten"

M - R

  • This fallacy [appeal to authority] is not in itself an error; it is impossible to learn much in today's world without letting somebody else crunch the numbers and offer us explanations. And teachers are sources of necessary information. But how we choose our "authorities" and place a value on such information, is just another skill rarely taught in our education systems. It's little wonder that to most folk, sound bites and talking heads are enough to count as experts. […] Teaching is reinforcing the appeal to authority, where anybody who seems more intelligent than you must ultimately be right. […] We educators must simply role-model critical thinking. […] Educators themselves have to be prepared to show that "evidence" and "answers" are two separate things by firmly believing that, themselves.
    • Mike McRae, Australian teacher and guest columnist, "Educating Future Critical Thinkers", Swift, 31 March 2006.
  • School teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole group of mental workers.
    • H.L. Mencken The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1908), pg. 217
  • The very corner-stone of an education intended to form great minds, must be the recognition of the principle, that the object is to call forth the greatest possible quantity of intellectual power, and to inspire the intensest love of truth: and this without a particle of regard to the results to which the exercise of that power may lead, even though it should conduct the pupil to opinions diametrically opposite to those of his teachers. We say this, not because we think opinions unimportant, but because of the immense importance which we attach to them; for in proportion to the degree of intellectual power and love of truth which we succeed in creating, is the certainty that (whatever may happen in any one particular instance) in the aggregate of instances true opinions will be the result; and intellectual power and practical love of truth are alike impossible where the reasoner is shown his conclusions, and informed beforehand that he is expected to arrive at them.
  • The schoolmaster is the person who builds up the intelligence of the pupil; the intelligence of the pupil increases in direct proportion to the efforts of the teacher; in other words, he knows just what the master has made him know and understands neither more nor less than the master has made him understand. When an inspector visits a school and questions the pupils he turns to the master, and if he is satisfied says: "Well done, teacher!" For the result is indubitably the work of the master; the discipline by which he has fixed the attention of his pupils, even to the psychical mechanism which has guided him in his teaching, all is due to him. God enters the school as a symbol in the crucifix, but the creator is the teacher.
    • Maria Montessori, Spontaneous Activity in Education (available at gutenberg.org).
  • "To make oneself interesting artificially," that is, interesting to those who have no interest in us, is indeed a very difficult task; and to arrest the attention hour after hour, and year after year, not of one, but of a multitude of persons who have nothing in common with us, not even years, is indeed a superhuman undertaking. Yet this is the task of the teacher, or, as he would say, his "art": to make this assembly of children whom he has reduced to immobility by discipline follow him with their minds, understand what he says, and learn; an internal action, which he cannot govern, as he governs the position of their bodies, but which he must win by making himself interesting, and by maintaining this interest.
    • Maria Montessori, Spontaneous Activity in Education (available at gutenberg.org).
  • Charles Xavier: A new generation of mutants is emerging, that much is certain. They will be called freaks. Genetic monstrosities. [...] But they are emerging in the inner cities, in the suburbs, in the deserts and the jungles. And when they emerge, they will need teachers, people who can help them overcome their anger and show them how to use their strange gifts responsibly. They will need us.
  • For the life of me I cannot fathom why we expect so much from teachers and provide them so little in return. In 1940, the average pay of a male teacher was actually 3.6 percent more than what other college-educated men earned. Today it is 60 percent lower. Women teachers now earn 16 percent less than other college-educated women. This bewilders me. [...] There was no Plato without Socrates, and no John Coltrane without Miles Davis.
    • Bill Moyers, "America 101", speech at the fiftieth anniversary of the Council of Great City Schools, 27 October 2006, Moyers on Democracy (2008), p. 237.
  • Ethics could teach us only those purposes and ideals. If the teachers seeks insight into the means by which the aim can be reached, into the facts by which the child can be molded, his way must lead from ethics to psychology. (...) Water flows downhill, anyhow, but to bring the water uphill hydraulic forces are indeed necessary. To overcome nature and instead to prepare for a life of ideals, to inhibit personal desires and instead to learn to serve the higher purposes indeed demands most serious and most systematic efforts. It is the teachers' task to make these efforts with all his best knowledge of mind and body, of social and of cultural values.
    • Hugo Munsterberg, Psychology and the Teacher, 1909 (new edition, 2006), pp. 64-65.
  • A good teacher does not draw out; he gives out, and what he gives out is love. And by love I mean approval, or if you like, friendliness, good nature. The good teacher not only understands the child: he approves of the child.
  • Don't tell us that the only way to teach a child is to spend too much of a year preparing him to fill out a few bubbles on a standardized test; we know that's not true.
  • What teaching has done for me the most as a person is it's trained me to be a great listener.
    • Catherine Opie Artifacts: Fascinating Facts about Art, Artists, and the Art World by Phaidon (2022)
  • What constitutes the teacher is the passion to make scholars, and again and again it happens that the great scholar has no such passion whatever.
    • George Herbert Palmer, The Ideal Teacher (Boston: Houghton Mifflin; 1910), page 9.
  • Since human beings are highly adaptable it may be possible for an individual with any sort of competence to learn, in the end, according to any teaching strategy. But the experiments show, very clearly indeed, that the rate, quality and durability of learning is crucially dependent upon whether or not the teaching strategy is of a sort that suits the individual
    • Gordon Pask (1972) Learning Strategies and Individual Competence p. 221.
  • Because salaries of academics are modest in comparison to those of the more successful members of corporate, legal, and medical lodges, teachers lead sane monetary lives. They plan and budget and rarely snap at the hook of debt camouflaged by creative accounting. Finances make teachers resourceful, and they ferret about finding ways to travel without demolishing their savings. Decades ago, I jettisoned pride, realizing that it was an encumbering, unaffordable luxury. I learned how to write clever, cajoling letters, offering to barter publicity or lectures for complimentary travel.
  • We need organizers and builders of a new society, we need warriors for a new way of life. Self government is our most effective educational instrument of producing such organizers, builders, and warriors.
  • Pinkevich, Outlines of Pedagogy,
  • In a democratic state the schoolmaster is afraid of his pupils and flatters them, and the pupils despise both schoolmaster and pedagogues. The young expect the same treatment as the old, and contradict them and quarrel with them. In fact, seniors have to flatter their juniors, in order not to be thought morose old dotards.
  • Each of these private teachers who work for pay ... inculcates nothing else than these opinions of the multitude which they opine when they are assembled and calls this knowledge wisdom.
  • What's all the noisy jargon of the schools?
  • To dazzle let the vain design,
    To raise the thought and touch the heart, be thine!
  • I have found that corrections done in a firm and fair manner with an explanation are appreciated, not resented. Always try to turn the encounter into a mutually positive learning experience. These truths are known to every good classroom teacher, every good coach, every good violin teacher, and every good construction foreman. Mistakes that have become deeply rooted habits- in a batter's stance, in a violinist's fingering, in a child's table manners, in a roofer's roofing skills- drive teachers, coaches, foremen, and parents nuts. You have to catch them all early, and properly train the correct actions, skills, and behaviors. Leaders who do not have the guts to immediately correct minor errors or shortcomings cannot be counted on to have the guts to deal with the big things.
    • Colin Powell, It Worked For Me: In Life and Leadership (2012), p. 91
  • What they did was sell invisible things. And after they’d sold what they had, they still had it. They sold what everyone needed but often didn’t want. They sold the key to the universe to people who didn’t even know it was locked.
  • Education is unfolding the wings of head and heart together. A true teacher pushes the students out of the nest to strengthen the wings.
    • Amit Ray. Walking the Path of Compassion
  • It is always the teacher who must learn the most … or else nothing real has happened in the exchange.
  • What strikes me most when I remember Paula's teaching is her presence as much as the content of her teachings. I think in this country we have an obsession with content and curriculum, all the while devaluing presence and proximity, which are teaching values hard to describe or quantify (or, indeed, teach). Paula has a tremendous gaze, a tremendous listening power, and the most intelligent curiosity of anyone I have ever met. She took me seriously.
  • Teaching is unbounded by the classroom. Just as love is unbounded by time.
    • Sarah Ruhl, "Is playwriting teachable?: the example of Paula Vogel," 100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write
  • Whoever enters the Way without a guide
    will take a hundred years to travel a two-day journey.
    The Prophet said "In this way you have no more
    faithful companion than your works."
    How can these works and this earning in the way of righteousness
    be accomplished without a master, O father? Can you practice the meanest profession in the world
    without a master's guidance?
    Whoever undertakes a profession without a master
    becomes the laughingstock of city and town.
    • Rumi Mathnavi translated by William Chittick pp. 122-123 as quoted in Classical Islam and Naqshbandi Sufi Tradition by Muhammad Hisham Kabbani p. 153

S - Z

  • We'll set thee to school to an ant, to teach thee there's no labouring i' the winter.
  • Schoolmasters will I keep within my house,
    Fit to instruct her youth. * * *
    * * * To cunning men
    I will be very kind, and liberal
    To mine own children in good bringing up.
  • He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
    • George Bernard Shaw, "Maxims for Revolutionists", appendix 2 to Man and Superman, in his Selected Plays with Prefaces (1948), vol. 3, p. 733.
  • There are two kinds of people in this world: those who, when faced with a window two floors up, will immediately accept the limitations it places upon them; and those who instantly look for a way to subvert both the height and the threatened effects of gravity. This room is full of the latter. It’s one of the reasons I love teaching; the opportunity to find those who would chance a fall in the attempt to fly, rather than stay safely within bounds.
  • Each of these private teachers who work for pay, whom the politicians call sophists and regard as their rivals, inculcates nothing else than these opinions of the multitude which they opine when they are assembled and calls this knowledge wisdom. It is as if a man were acquiring the knowledge of the humors and desires of a great strong beast which he had in his keeping, how it is to be approached and touched, and when and by what things it is made most savage or gentle, yes, and the several sounds it is wont to utter on the occasion of each, and again what sounds uttered by another make it tame or fierce, and after mastering this knowledge by living with the creature and by lapse of time should call it wisdom, and should construct thereof a system and art and turn to the teaching of it, knowing nothing in reality about which of these opinions and desires is honorable or base, good or evil, just or unjust, but should apply all these terms to the judgments of the great beast, calling the things that pleased it good, and the things that vexed it bad, having no other account to render of them, but should call what is necessary just and honorable, never having observed how great is the real difference between the necessary and the good, and being incapable of explaining it to another. ... Do you suppose that there is any difference between such a one and the man who thinks that it is wisdom to have learned to know the moods and the pleasures of the motley multitude in their assembly, whether about painting or music or, for that matter, politics?
  • Neither my life in school nor my life away from school is particularly blissful. My car breaks down, I quarrel with my friends, I get sick, and I worry about my children. I have to keep a watch on my moods, needs, biases, weaknesses, and limits in order to see how they are affecting my work. If I can monitor how my emotions are at play in my classroom, I can better put a break on them when they are destructive, and better allow my joyful, level, nurturant side to dominate.
    • Bob Strachota, On Their Side: Helping Children Take Charge of Their Learning (1996), p. 75
  • A secure teacher expects to be a learner all day, every day, and is comfortable with the ambiguity of that role. It’s not so important to be “right” as to be open; it’s not so important to have all the answers as to be hungry for them. A secure teacher leaves school each day with important questions to puzzle about overnight and the belief that each day contains the insights necessary for a more effective tomorrow. A secure teacher believes that having these kinds of insights is professionally challenging and personally satisfying.
    • Carol Ann Tomlinson, The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners (2014), p. 49
  • I do not allow a woman to teach or to usurp authority over the man.
    • 1 Timothy 2 v 12
  • The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don't tell you what to see.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 779-80.
  • We must not contradict, but instruct him that contradicts us; for a madman is not cured by another running mad also.
  • What's a' your jargon o' your schools,
    Your Latin names for horns and stools;
    If honest nature made you fools.
  • He is wise who can instruct us and assist us in the business of daily virtuous living.
  • You cannot teach old dogs new tricks.
    • Quoted by Jos. Chamberlain, at Greenock (Oct., 1903).
  • Seek to delight, that they may mend mankind,
    And, while they captivate, inform the mind.
  • The twig is so easily bended
    I have banished the rule and the rod:
    I have taught them the goodness of knowledge,
    They have taught me the goodness of God;
    My heart is the dungeon of darkness,
    Where I shut them for breaking a rule;
    My frown is sufficient correction;
    My love is the law of the school.
  • There is no teaching until the pupil is brought into the same state or principle in which you are; a transfusion takes place; he is you, and you are he; there is a teaching; and by no unfriendly chance or bad company can he ever quite lose the benefit.
  • Instruction does not prevent waste of time or mistakes; and mistakes themselves are often the best teachers of all.
  • A boy is better unborn than untaught.
  • Grave is the Master's look; his forehead wears
    Thick rows of wrinkles, prints of worrying cares:
    Uneasy lies the heads of all that rule,
    His worst of all whose kingdom is a school.
    Supreme he sits; before the awful frown
    That binds his brows the boldest eye goes down;
    Not more submissive Israel heard and saw
    At Sinai's foot the Giver of the Law.
  • Doctrina sed vim promovet insitam.
    • Instruction enlarges the natural powers of the mind.
    • Horace, Carmina, IV. 4. 33.
  • Fingit equum tenera docilem cervice magister
    Ire viam qua monstret eques.
    • The trainer trains the docile horse to turn, with his sensitive neck, whichever way the rider indicates.
    • Horace, Epistles, Book I. 2. 64. ("Quam" for "qua in some texts).
  • If you be a lover of instruction, you will be well instructed.
    • Isocrates, Ad Dæmonicum. Inscribed in golden letters over his school, according to Roger Ascham, in his Schoolmaster.
  • Speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee.
    • Job, XII. 8.
  • Whilst that the childe is young, let him be instructed in vertue and lytterature.
    • John Lyly, Euphues, The Anatomy of Wit, Of the Education of Youth.
  • Adde, quod ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes
    Emollit mores, nec sinit esse fervos.
    • To be instructed in the arts, softens the manners and makes men gentle.
    • Ovid, Epistolæ Ex Ponto, II. 9. 47.
  • Fas est ab hoste doceri.
    • It is lawful to be taught by an enemy.
    • Ovid, Metamorphoses, IV. 428.
  • All jargon of the schools.
  • I am not a teacher: only a fellow-traveller of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead—ahead of myself as well as of you.
  • A little bench of heedless bishops here,
    And there a chancellor in embryo.
  • Whoe'er excels in what we prize,
    Appears a hero in our eyes;
    Each girl, when pleased with what is taught,
    Will have the teacher in her thought.
    * * * * *
    A blockhead with melodious voice,
    In boarding-schools may have his choice.
  • Domi habuit unde disceret.
    • He need not go away from home for instruction.
    • Terence, Adelphi, III. 3. 60.
  • Delightful task! to rear the tender Thought,
    To teach the young Idea how to shoot,
    To pour the fresh Instruction o'er the Mind,
    To breathe the enlivening Spirit, and to fix
    The generous
    urpose in the glowing breast.
Quotes reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 221.
  • A man's scholarship may be perfect, his character admirable, and yet, for want of the power to control subordinates and govern boys, he may be wholly unfit for a schoolmaster.
    • Sir R. Matins, V.-C, Hayman v. Governors of Rugby School (1874), L. R. 18 Eq. Ca. 85.
  • An original thinker and able teacher very soon attracts a large class and vice versa.
    • Lord Watson, Caird v. Sime (1887), 57 L. J. P. C. 9.
  • Let the soldier be abroad if he will, he can do nothing in this age. There is another personage, a personage less imposing in the eyes of some, perhaps insignificant. The schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military array.
  • A master should be paid liberally, in order to secure a person properly qualified.
    • Sir John Romilly, Att.-Gen. v. Warden, &c. of Louth School (1852), 14 Beav. 206.

See also

  • Encyclopedic article on teachers on Wikipedia
  • The dictionary definition of teaching on Wiktionary
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