Teacher quotes
5.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside teacher — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"But when all is said and done, the fact remains that some teachers have a naturally inspiring presence and can make their exercises interesting, whilst others simply cannot. And psychology and general pedagogy here confess their failure, and hand things over to the deeper spring of human personality to conduct the task."
"Ingenuity in meeting and pursuing the pupil, that tact for the concrete situation, though they are the alpha and omega of the teacher's art, are things to which psychology cannot help us in the least."
"Psychology ought certainly to give the teacher radical help."
"From all these facts there emerges a very simple abstract program for the teacher to follow in keeping the attention of the child: Begin with the line of his native interests, and offer him objects that have some immediate connection with these."
"The amount of psychology which is necessary to all teachers need not be very great."
"The exercise of voluntary attention in the schoolroom must therefore be counted one of the most important points of training that take place there; and the first-rate teacher, by the keenness of the remoter interests which he is able to awaken, will provide abundant opportunities for its occurrence."
"The mind of your own enemy, the pupil, is working away from you, as keenly and eagerly as is the mind of the commander on the other side from the scientific general. Just what the respective enemies want and think, and what they know or do not know, are as hard things for the teachers as for the general to find out."
"The same is true of Love, and the instinctive desire to please those whom we love. The teacher who succeeds in getting herself loved by the pupils will obtain results which one of a more forbidding temperament finds it impossible to secure."
"The worst thing that can happen to a good teacher is to get a bad conscience about her profession because she feels herself hopeless as a psychologist."
"It is only the fundamental conceptions of psychology which are of real value to a teacher."
"The teachers of this country, one may say, have its future in their hands."
"To know psychology, therefore, is absolutely no guarantee that we shall be good teacher."
"The difference between an interesting and a tedious teacher consists in little more than the inventiveness by which the one is able to mediate these associations and connections, and in the dullness in discovering such transitions which the other shows."
"No reception without reaction, no impression without correlative expression, -this is the great maxim which the teacher ought never to forget."
"You perceive now, my friends, what your general or abstract duty is as teachers. Although you have to generate in your pupils a large stock of ideas, any one of which may be inhibitory, yet you must also see to it that no habitual hesitancy or paralysis of the will ensues, and that the pupil still retains his power of vigorous action."
"And I was lucky enough to have teachers that really, really looked out for me and really encouraged all that. And in rural Louisiana, that was a rare thing back then."
"I don't know if you've been in any inner-city schools, but it's pretty demoralizing. The kids come to class bright-eyed, enthusiastic - entering first grade really looking forward to school. By the fourth grade they're just completely turned off, and by the time they enter high school, they see little relationship between school and employment. It's bad enough you have incompetent teachers and schools that are poorly run, understaffed, and lack material resources. It's even worse when the kids themselves don't feel they have any stake in school."
"Thanks, sir; all the rest is mute."
"Thus may poor fools Belive false teachers."
"My favorite English teacher in high school showed me 'Brazil' when I was 15 and it blew my mind. It's one of those movies that's revealed itself in different ways as I've gone back to it over the years."
