Famous Quotes about Teachers and Teaching (90 Quotations)

The true aim of everyone who aspires to be a teacher should be, not to impart his own opinions, but to kindle minds.

The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-distrust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciple.

The truth is that the average schoolmaster, on all the lower levels, is and always must be essentially and next door to an idiot, for how can one imagine an intelligent man engaging in so puerile an avocation?

The world of knowledge takes a crazy turn when teachers themselves are taught to learn.

There is no human reason why a child should not admire and emulate his teacher's ability to do sums, rather than the village bum's ability to whittle sticks and smoke cigarettes. The reason why the child does not is plain enough — the bum has put himself on an equality with him and the teacher has not.

There is no real teacher who in practice does not believe in the existence of the soul, or in a magic that acts on it through speech.

Those who go to college and never get out are called professors.

Those who know how to think need no teachers.

To be good is noble, but to teach others how to be good is nobler and less trouble.

To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching. To attain it we must be able to guess what will interest; we must learn to read the childish soul as we might a piece of music. Then, by simply changing the key, we keep up the attraction and vary the song.

To teach is to learn twice.

To teach successfully we must tell all we know, but only what is adaptable to the student.

To teach well, we need not say all that we know, Successful teachers are effective in spite of the psychological theories they suffer under.

Unless we do his teachings, we do not demonstrate faith in him.

We love the precepts for the teacher's sake.

We must view young people not as empty bottles to be filled, but as candles to be lit.

We will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught.

Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace the day's disasters in his morning face.

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

What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.