Teaching quotes
3.8K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside teaching — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"I'd like the people teaching my kids to be good enough that they could get a job at the company I work for, making a hundred thousand dollars a year. Why should they work at a school for thirty-five to forty thousand dollars if they could get a job here at a hundred thousand dollars a year?"
"When they lose their sense of awe, people turn to religion. When they no longer trust themselves, they begin to depend upon authority. Therefore the Master steps back so that people won't be confused. He teaches without a teaching, so that people will have nothing to learn."
"Teaching high school, in addition to knowing one's subject matter thoroughly and being able to convey it to others, requires the grit of a long-distance runner, the stamina of a boxer going 15 rounds, the temperament of a juggler and the street smarts of a three-card monte dealer."
"Adde, quod ingénues didicisse fideliter artes Emollit mores, nec sinit esse fervos. To be instructed in the arts, softens the manners and makes men gentle."
"No science is speedily learned by the noblest genius without tuition."
"The non-doing of any evil, the performance of what's skillful, the cleansing of one's own mind: this is the teaching of the Awakened."
"Whoever sees me sees the teaching, and whoever sees the teaching sees me."
"A man should first direct himself in the way he should go. Only then should he instruct others."
"A government which uses force to maintain its rule teaches the oppressed to use force to oppose it."
"The bad things, don't do them. The good things, try to do them. Try to purify, subdue your own mind. That is the teaching of all buddhas."
"I realize that many elements of the Buddhist teaching can be found in Christianity, Judaism, Islam. I think if Buddhism can help, it is the concrete methods of practice."
"Rulers, Statesmen, Nations, are wont to be emphatically commended to the teaching which experience offers in history. But what experience and history teach is this - that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it. Each period is involved in such peculiar circumstances, exhibits a condition of things so strictly idiosyncratic, that its conduct must be regulated by considerations connected with itself, and itself alone."
"Proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you have always known."
"Teaching has ruined more American novelists than drink."
"Success is like dealing with your kid or teaching your wife to drive. Sooner or later you'll end up in the police station."
"Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows."
"Education sows not seeds in you, but makes your seeds grow."
"Like most of the other teachers, I'd done a bit of teaching and we all think we're great at what we do, but you realize that normally you have an audience who are all onside, who all want to listen."
"There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth."
"Study Chairman Mao's writings, follow his teachings and act according to his instructions."
