Teacher Quotes: Inspirational, Thoughtful and Funny
Teacher quotes are something that everyone can relate to. We’ve all had someone teach us something. As a wise man once noted, “Teaching is the only profession that teaches all the other professions.”
Instructors and their words are something that you carry forever with you in your hearts. A teacher can take any form – that of an educator, a mentor, a guru, an instructor, or a guide.
No matter your age or profession, there will always be someone whom you look up to as a mentor. They might provide you with a new perspective on a subject matter that can have a profound influence on you.
Maybe they share insights that provide a new direction to your life, something no one else suggested. Many people will come and go in your life, but a good teacher leaves lasting memories.
There are great educators behind successful people. Find out what the greatest minds and achievers have to say about the subject.
Inspirational Quotes for Teachers
The best teachers are those who show you where to look but don’t tell you what to see.
Unknown
Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.
John Steinbeck
A teacher takes a hand, opens a mind, and touches a heart.
Unknown
Teachers should guide without dictating and participate without dominating.
C.B. Neblett
Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.
Plato
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Best Teacher Quotes
I touch the future. I teach.
Christa McAuliffe
Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image but giving them the opportunity to create themselves.
Steven Spielberg
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
I’m not a teacher but an awakener.
Robert Frost
See Good Messages for Teachers.
Funny Teacher Quotes
A teacher’s job is to take a bunch of live wires and see that they are well-grounded.
Darwin D. Martin
Experience is a good teacher, but she sends in terrific bills.
Minna Thomas Antrim
A cross-eyed teacher can keep twice the number of children in order than any other because the pupils do not know who she’s looking at.
John R. Kemble
There are three good reasons to be a teacher — June, July, and August.
Unknown
Teachers are the only professionals who have to respond to bells every forty-five minutes and come out fighting.
Frank McCourt
Schoolteachers are not fully appreciated by parents until it rains all day Saturday.
A. Whitney Brown
As long as teachers give tests there will always be prayer in schools.
Unknown
See Best Messages for Teachers.
Good Teacher Quotes
Teaching is the profession that teaches all the other professions.
Unknown
Teaching is the greatest act of optimism.
Colleen Wilcox
The secret of teaching is to appear to have known all your life what you learned this afternoon.
Unknown
Mentoring is a brain to pick, an ear to listen, and a push in the right direction.
John C. Crosby
The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.
Mark van Doren
Check out 200 Back-To-School Quotes and Captions.
Teaching Quotations
In teaching, you cannot see the fruit of a day’s work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years.
Jacques Barzun
What office is there which involves more responsibility, which requires more qualifications, and which ought, therefore, to be more honorable than teaching?
Harriet Martineau
To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.
Josef Albers
Teach Quotes
In learning you will teach, in teaching, you will learn.
Phil Collins
Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best.
Bob Talbert
Check out thank you note to teacher ideas.
Seldom was any knowledge given to keep but to impart; the grace of this rich jewel is lost in concealment.
Bishop Hall
The educator must, above all, understand how to wait; to reckon all effects in the light of the future, not of the present.
Ellen Key
A very wise old teacher once said: I consider a day’s teaching wasted if we do not all have one hearty laugh.
Gilbert Highet
Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.’
Jacques Barzun
Teacher Appreciation Sayings
A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
Henry Adams
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 the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
Carl Jung
I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.
Lily Tomlin as Edith Ann
I’ve seen and met angels wearing the disguise of ordinary people living ordinary lives.
Tracy Chapman
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
I can no other answer make, but thanks, and thanks.
William Shakespeare
Teacher appreciation makes the world of education go around.
Helen Peters
He who opens a school door closes a prison.
Victor Hugo
Find out how to become a teacher.
Back-to-School Quotes
Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
Gracie Allen
It’s like going back to school. You know, autumn! Time for ‘Harry Potter’.
Robbie Coltraine
I allowed myself to think, if I could be doing anything in the world, what would I be doing? And what came to mind is I’d be traveling a little bit, I’d be going to classes, and I’d be going back to school.
Ricky Williams
The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.
Ralph W. Sockman
We all learn by experience, but some of us have to go to summer school.
Peter De Vries
Best Teacher Sayings
The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence.
Amos Bronson Alcott
A mentor is someone who sees more talent and ability within you than you see in yourself and helps bring it out of you.
Bob Proctor
The task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility and evil with activity.
Maria Montessori
A true teacher would never tell you what to do. But he would give you the knowledge with which you could decide what would be best for you to do.
Christopher Pike
Without a mentor in life, one can easily succumb to folly. Without a mentor in life, one can easily become self-centered, capricious, and arrogant.
Unknown
Motivational Quotes For Teachers
Teachers can make such a profound impact on our lives and should be honored as heroes.
Rainn Wilson
If you have to put someone on a pedestal, put teachers. They are society’s heroes.
Guy Kawasaki
Everyone who remembers his own education remembers teachers, not methods and techniques. The teacher is the heart of the educational system.
Sidney Hook
One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.
Malala Yousafzai
What a block of marble is to a sculptor a ready mind is to a teacher.
Joseph Addison
A great teacher takes a hand, opens a mind, and touches a heart.
Unknown
Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace.
Confucius
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
A human being is not attaining his full heights until he is educated.
Horace Mann
Inspiring Teachers
The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.
Martin Luther King, Jr
Education is the key to success in life, and teachers make a lasting impact on the lives of their students. Solomon Ortiz
In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers, and the rest of us would have to settle for something else.
Lee Iacocca
If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.
John Dewey
The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.
Sydney J. Harris
If a child can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.
Ignacio ‘Nacho’ Estrada
A hundred years from now, it will not matter what kind of car I drove, what kind of house I lived in, how much money I had in the bank…but the world may be a better place because I made a difference in the life of a child.
Forest Witcraft
Short Teacher Quotes
The best teachers teach from the heart, not from the book.
Unknown
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 mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.
William A. Ward
A good teacher is like a candle – it consumes itself to light the way for others.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
One of the greatest values of mentors is the ability to see ahead what others cannot see and to help them navigate a course to their destination.
John C. Maxwell
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
A truly special teacher is very wise and sees tomorrow in every child’s eyes.
Unknown
Ye great teachers: listen to what you say!
Goethe
The best way a mentor can prepare another leader is to expose him or her to other great people.
John C. Maxwell
Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.
Benjamin Franklin
Thank You Teacher Quotes
What nobler employment, or more valuable to the state, than that of the man who instructs the rising generation?
Marcus Tullius Cicero
We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.
Albert Schweitzer
I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.
Alexander the Great
Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
Marcel Proust
Without teacher appreciation, there can’t be any student progress.
Theresa Grimm
Teachers appreciate being appreciated, for teacher appreciation is their highest award.
William Prince
There’s no one quite like a special teacher, and no teacher quite as special as you.
Unknown
A mentor is someone who allows you to see the hope inside yourself.
Oprah Winfrey
Grateful Teacher Quotes
Teachers have three loves: love of learning, love of learners, and the love of bringing the first two loves together.
Scott Hayden
Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.
William Butler Yeats
Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.
Malcom X
The duties of a teacher are neither few nor small, but they elevate the mind and give energy to the character.
Dorothea Dix
It takes a big heart to help shape little minds.
Unknown
Teachers can change lives with just the right mix of chalk and challenges.
Joyce Meyer
Heartfelt Teacher Quotes
Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher.
Japanese Proverb
What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul.
Joseph Addison
I can’t believe I just saw my teacher at the grocery store! I thought she lived in her classroom!
Heidi McDonald
The best teacher of children, in brief, is one who is essentially childlike.
H. L. Mencken
Teacher Day
Sunday is a teacher’s day of REST: the REST of the laundry, the REST of the housework, and grade the REST of the papers.
Heidi McDonald
To stimulate life, leaving it then free to develop, to unfold, herein lies the first task of the teacher.
Maria Montessori
The universal mission of all educators is to let the torch of knowledge illuminate the world.
Eraldo Banovac
It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
Albert Einstein
The average teacher explains complexity; the gifted teacher reveals simplicity.
Robert Brault
By learning, you will teach; by teaching, you will learn.
Latin Proverb
Teachers are not in it for the income but for the outcome.
Unknown
What a teacher writes on the blackboard of life can never be erased.
Unknown
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
Importance of Educator
To this end, the greatest asset of a school is the personality of the teacher.
John Strachan
A good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination, and instill a love of learning.
Brad Henry
The job of an educator is to teach students to see vitality in themselves.
Joseph Campbell
Educators are the only people who lose sleep over other people’s kids.
Nicholas A. Ferroni
Teachers, I believe, are the most responsible and important members of society because their professional efforts affect the fate of the earth.
Helen Caldicott
Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre.
Gail Godwin
I think the teaching profession contributes more to the future of our society than any other single profession.
John Wooden
Education Quotes
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
Nelson Mandela
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
Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
Malcolm Forbes
The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts.
C. S. Lewis
Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.
Malcolm X
By Mike O’Halloran
Mike is an inventor, author, and publisher of Greeting Card Poet.
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