There were times during my K-12 and higher education teaching career when I needed a little inspiration to keep me going. In times like this, I leaned on inspirational quotes about teaching. In this article, I would like to share 60 of my all-time favorite inspirational quotes about teaching.
- “A good teacher is like a candle – it consumes itself to light the way for others.” –Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
- “If you have to put someone on a pedestal, put teachers. They are society’s heroes. –Guy Kawasaki
- “When you study great teachers… you will learn much more from their caring and hard work than from their style.” –William Glasser
- “Wherever you find something extraordinary, you’ll find the fingerprints of a great teacher.” –Arne Duncan
- “Teachers can change lives with just the right mix of chalk and challenges.” –Joyce Meyer
- “It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” –Albert Einstein
- “Let us remember: One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world.” –Malala Yousafzai
- “A good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination, and instill a love of learning.” –Brad Henry
- “Education is the key to success in life, and teachers make a lasting impact in the lives of their students.” –Solomon Ortiz
- “Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.” –Bill Gates
- “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
- “Good teachers know how to bring out the best in students.” –Charles Kuralt
- “They inspire you, they entertain you, and you end up learning a ton even when you don’t know it” –Nicholas Sparks, Dear John
- “I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.” –Alexander the Great
- “The Master said, A true teacher is one who, keeping the past alive, is also able to understand the present.” (Analects 2.11)” –Confucius
- “The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.” –Mark Van Doren
- “I am a teacher. It’s how I define myself. 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. That’s the way I see myself, so whatever it is that I will do eventually after politics, it’ll have to do a lot with teaching.” –Justin Trudeau
- “The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don’t tell you what to see.” –Alexandra K.Trenfor
- “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
- “Only one person in a million becomes enlightened without a teacher’s help.” –Bodhidharma
- “If you don’t have a teacher you can’t have a disciple.” –Dallas Willard
- “Teach love, generosity, good manners and some of that will drift from the classroom to the home and who knows, the children will be educating the parents.” –Roger Moore
- “It’s the teacher that makes the difference, not the classroom.” –Michael Morpurgo
- “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” –William Arthur Ward
- “I think the teaching profession contributes more to the future of our society than any other single profession.” –John Wooden
- “I touch the future. I teach.” –Christa McAuliffe
- “Every great leader is a great teacher, and the greatest leaders seize every opportunity to teach well.” –Albert Mohler
- “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn. ” –Benjamin Franklin
- “Your best teacher is the person offering you your greatest challenge.” –Cheryl Richardson
- “Let my teaching fall like rain and my words descend like dew, like showers on new grass, like abundant rain on tender plants.” –Deuteronomy 32:2
- “Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser; teach a righteous man, and he will increase in learning.” –Proverbs 9:9
- “Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.” –Aristotle
- “The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.” –Aristotle
- “A good teacher is like a good artist. They go right to the most difficult part of whatever’s going on.” –Bruce Nauman
- “A good teacher who can take the zero pay and help kids develop physically, emotionally, socially, is literally an angel.” –Eva Amurri
- “What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches.” –Karl A. Menninger
- “The older I got, the smarter my teachers became.” –Ally Carter.
- “Teaching is only demonstrating that it is possible. Learning is making it possible for yourself.” –Paulo Coelho
- “A good teacher, like a good entertainer first must hold his audience’s attention, then he can teach his lesson.” –John Henrik Clarke
- “Great teachers emanate out of knowledge, passion and compassion.” –A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
- “Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best.” –Bob Talbert.
- “A teacher is never too smart to learn from his pupils.” –Bill Bowerman
- “We must become what we wish to teach.” –Nathaniel Branden, Six Pillars of Self-Esteem
- “Teaching is the greatest act of optimism.” –Colleen Wilcox
- “Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.” –William Butler Yeats
- “Most of us end up with no more than five or six people who remember us. Teachers have thousands of people who remember them for the rest of their lives.”–Andy Rooney
- “Ideal teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross, then having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create bridges of their own.” –Nikos Kazantzakis
- “So what does a good teacher do? Create tension – but just the right amount.” –Donald Norman
- “Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre.” –Gail Godwin
- “The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.” –Khalil Gibran
- “The average teacher explains complexity; the gifted teacher reveals simplicity.” –Robert Brault
- “Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.” –B. F. Skinner
- “It is a greater work to educate a child, in the true and larger sense of the word, than to rule a state”. –Dr. William Ellery Channing
- “Teaching is the essential profession, the one that makes all other professions possible.” –David Haselkorn.
- “Teachers have three loves: love of learning, love of learners, and the love of bringing the first two loves together.” –Scott Hayden
- “Teaching is the highest art; before the doctor, there was a teacher.” –Steve Perry
- “The greatest sign of success for a teacher… is to be able to say, ‘The children are now working as if I did not exist.’” –Maria Montessori
- “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.” –Amos Bronson Alcott
- “The test of a good teacher is not how many questions he can ask his pupils that they will answer readily, but how many questions he inspires them to ask him which he finds it hard to answer.”–Alice Wellington Rollins,
