Teaching is the most important profession for many reasons.
Inspirational
45 Quotes About Teachers
Teaching is the most important profession for many reasons.
Many teachers and students have something special to remember about education, and almost everyone had that one special teacher who made a difference.
Education resources
45 quotes for teachers
To reflect on teachers and teaching, we have assembled 45 inspirational quotes for teachers or anyone to ponder, and it’s worth it!
- “One good teacher in a lifetime may sometimes change a delinquent into a solid citizen.” – Philip Wylie
- “There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fill you with so much quail shot that you can’t move, and the kind that just give you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies.” – Robert Frost
- “I think the teaching profession contributes more to the future of our society than any other single profession.” – John Wooden
- “I had a terrible education. I attended a school for emotionally disturbed teachers.” – Woody Allen
- “If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself.” – Confucius
- “Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn.” – Eric Hoffer
- “I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.” – John Steinbeck
- “You can get help from teachers, but you are going to have to learn a lot by yourself, sitting alone in a room.” – Dr. Seuss
- “I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.” – Alexander the Great
- “The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know.” – Simone Weil
- “Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity a greater.” – William Hazlitt
- “Advice is sometimes transmitted more successfully through a joke than grave teaching.” – Baltasar Gracian
- “Failure is a great teacher, and I think when you make mistakes and you recover from them and you treat them as valuable learning experiences, then you’ve got something to share.” – Steve Harvey
- “The teacher is the one who gets the most out of the lessons, and the true teacher is the learner.” – Elbert Hubbard
- “Study how water flows in a valley stream, smoothly and freely between the rocks. Also, learn from holy books and wise people. Everything – even mountains, rivers, plants and trees – should be your teacher.” – Morihei Ueshiba
- “When we become a really mature, grown-up, wise society, we will put teachers at the center of the community, where they belong. We don’t honor them enough, we don’t pay them enough.” – Charles Kuralt
- “It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” – Albert Einstein
- “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” – William Arthur Ward
- “A good teacher, like a good entertainer, first must hold his audience’s attention, then he can teach his lesson.” – John Henrik Clarke
- “A good teacher who can take the zero pay and help kids develop physically, emotionally, socially, is literally an angel.” – Eva Amurri
- “Success is not a good teacher, failure makes you humble.” – Shah Rukh Khan
- “You cannot teach a crab to walk straight.” – Aristophanes
- “When I am able to resist the temptation to judge others, I can see them as teachers of forgiveness in my life, reminding me that I can only have peace of mind when I forgive rather than judge.” – Gerald Jampolsky
- “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” – Henry Adams
- “The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.” – C. S. Lewis
- “I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.” – Khalil Gibran
- “The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.” – Anatole France
- “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 good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination, and instill a love of learning.” – Brad Henry
- “I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.” – Lily Tomlin
- “A teacher is a person who never says anything once.” – Howard Nemerov
- “I tried to stir the imagination and enthusiasms of students to take risks, to do what they were most afraid of doing, to widen their horizons of action.” – James Broughton
- “Love is a better teacher than duty.“ – Albert Einstein
- “The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called ‘truth’.” – Dan Rather
- “Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” – Denis Waitley
- “I will venture to maintain that where the teacher is not pleasing to the pupil, there is no education.” – Xenophon
- “A true teacher defends his students against his own personal influences.” – Amos Bronson Alcott
- “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
- “I wanted to be a teacher.” – Kim Kardashian
- “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
- “Fear is not a lasting teacher of duty.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “Every bit of me is devoted to love and art. And I aspire to try to be a teacher to my young fans who feel just like I felt when I was younger. I just felt like a freak. I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m trying to liberate them, I want to free them of their fears and make them feel that they can make their own space in the world.” – Lady Gaga
- “The thing I loved the most – and still love the most about teaching – is that you can connect with an individual or a group and see that individual or group exceed their limits.” – Mike Krzyzewski
- “Everybody’s a teacher if you listen.” – Doris Roberts
Inspirational teacher quotes
This list of best teacher quotes is just a sampling of countless quotes for teachers. These inspirational teacher quotes will hopefully shed light on the value of teaching and what it means to be a teacher. Without teachers, the world could not function, and the teaching profession faces many challenges.
If you found these teacher quotes to inspire or uplift you, feel free to share these quotes about teachers with your fellow teachers, students, or others, and you will have a conversation on your hands. Teaching is to touch lives forever. Let these teacher quotes open your mind to what teaching can do to change lives and the world in real ways.
