Teacher quotes
5.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"The true teacher is within us. A good teacher is someone who can help you to go back and touch the true teacher within, because you already have the insight within you."
"One of the things that we must do as teachers is twirl around and around, and find out what works with the situation that we're in. Our models might not work. And that twirling, changing, is part of the empowerment."
"You don't have to burn books, you don't have to rebel against teachers to rebel; to rebel is to truly own your own self."
"The greatest gift is a portion of thyself."
"Nature is the greatest teacher and I learn from her best when others are asleep. In the still dark hours before sunrise God tells me of the plans I am to fulfill."
"All learning is in the learner, not the teacher."
"If your happiness depends on your children being happy, that makes them your hostages. So stay out of their business, stop using them for your happiness, and be your own happiness. And that way you are the teacher for your children: someone who knows how to live a happy life."
"The real difficulty, the difficulty which has baffled the sages of all times, is rather this: how can we make our teaching so potent in the motional life of man, that its influence should withstand the pressure of the elemental psychic forces in the individual?"
"I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind."
"Instead of sending guns, send books. Instead of sending weapons, send teachers."
"We teachers can only help the work going on, as servants wait upon a master. We then become witnesses to the development of the human soul; the emergence of the New Man who will no longer be the victim of events but, thanks to his clarity of vision, will become able to direct and to mold the future of mankind."
"Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource."
"Teaching is the only major occupation of man for which we have not yet 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."
"A little neglect may breed great mischief."
"Morale - the will to win, the fighting heart - are the honored hallmarks of the football coach and player. Likewise, they are characteristic of the enterprising executive, the successful troop leader, the established artist and the dedicated teacher and scientist."
"I believe in teaching just a few students, as teaching requires a constant alert observation on each individual in order to establish a direct relationship. A good teacher cannot be fixed in a routine, and many are just that. During teaching, each moment requires a sensitive mind that is constantly changing and constantly adapting."
"It would be better if you began to teach others only after you yourself have learned something."
"The business of both parent and teacher is to enable and to help the child to educate himself, to develop his own intellectual, moral, aesthetic and practical capacities and to grow freely as an organic being, not to be kneaded and pressured into form like an inert plastic material"
"A man is not what he is because of the teachers he has had, but because of what he has done"
"Once I understood Bach's music, I wanted to be a concert pianist. Bach made me dedicate my life to music, and it was that teacher who introduced me to his world."
