Our 52 Favorite Inspirational Quotes for Teachers

Khushboo Ramchandani
July 11, 2020
5 min read

A quite common phenomenon for many teachers is the “teacher burnout”. This is something most educators face at least once or twice in their careers. When a teacher burns out, he or she loses the confidence and motive to teach - thereby losing focus. For this exact reason, we have prepared a bunch of inspirational quotes that you can read to get right back on track. Feel free to bookmark this article and come back and read one for each week of the year (52 for especially this reason!). We’ve tried our best to limit the cliche-ness and dug through Pinterest boards, magazines, and other blogs to find the best for you!

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” - William Arthur Ward

“Everyone who remembers his own education remembers teachers, not methods and techniques. The teacher is the heart of the educational system.”  - Sidney Hook

“So what does a good teacher do? Create tension - but just the right amount.” - Donald Norman

“Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty.” - Albert Einstein

“The greatest use of a life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.” - William James

“What greater joy can a teacher feel than to witness a child’s success?” - Michelle M Graham

“Education is much more than a matter of imparting the knowledge and skills by which narrow goals are achieved. It is also about opening the child’s eyes to the needs and rights of others.” - Dalai Lama

“The best education is not given to students; it is drawn out of them.” - Gerald Belcher

“Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.” - Josef Albers

“A pro is someone who can do great work when he doesn’t feel like it.” - Alastair Cook

“Teaching is the only major occupation…for which we have not developed tools that make an average person capable of competence and performance. In teaching, we rely on the naturals, the ones who somehow know how to teach.” - Peter Drucker

“No matter what accomplishments you achieve, somebody helped you.” - Althea Gibson

“The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.” - Mark Van Doren

“If a child can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.” - Ignacio Estrada

“Teaching is the one profession that creates all other professions.” - Unknown

“The object of teaching a child is to enable him [or her] to get along without his [or her] teacher.” - Elbert Hubbard

“I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.” - Lily Tomlin

“One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is a vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.” - Carl Jung

“I never teach my pupils. I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” - Einstein

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” - Thomas Edison

“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

“Spoon feeding, in the long run, teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.” - E. M. Forster

“What office is there which involves more responsibility, which requires more qualifications, and which ought, therefore, to be more honorable, than that of teaching?” - Harriet Martineau

“If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.” - John Dewey

“Teachers, I believe, are the most responsible and important members of society because their professional efforts affect the fate of the earth.” - Helen Caldicott

“The more that you read, the more things you will know, the more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” - Dr. Seuss

“At the desk where I sit, I have learned one great truth. The answer for all our national problems — the answer to all the problems of the world — comes to a single word. That word is education.” - Lyndon B. Johnson

“The best teachers teach from the heart, not from the book.” - Unknown

“What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.” - George Bernard Shaw

“Students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” - Anonymous

“In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less.” - Lee Iacocca

“Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.” - Gail Goldwin

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” - William Butler Yeats

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupér

“Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.” - Jacques Barzun

“There is no failure. Only feedback.” - Robert Allen

“We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“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

“Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace.” - Confucius

“Never discourage anyone…who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.” - Plato

“Learning is not a spectator sport.” - D. Blocher

“There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it.” - Charles F. Kettering

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” - Benjamin Franklin

“What we learn with pleasure we never forget.” - Alfred Mercier

“I’m not sayin’ I’m gonna change the world, but I guarantee that I will spark the brain that will.” - Tupac Shakur

“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.” - Henri Bergson

“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

“The greatest sign of success for a teacher… is to be able to say, ‘The students are now working as if I did not exist.” - Maria Montessori

“We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.” - Llyod Alexander

“There is no single way to educate.” - Michael Gurian

“The best teachers are those who show you where to look but don’t tell you what to see.” - Alexandra K. Trenfor

“Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one’s self-esteem. That is why young children before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily.” - Thomas Szasz

Bonus - “Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.” - C.S. Lewis


Let us know your favorite ones in the comment section below. And we’d also recommend for you to try out Reportcard as it would be an great asset to your institute 😄.

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Education
Khushboo Ramchandani
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