The Really Big List of Education Quotes & Links

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Good schools, like good societies and good families, celebrate and cherish diversity.
-- Deborah Meier

Every student can learn, just not on the same day, or the same way.
-- George Evans

That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.
-- Doris Lessing

What is important is to keep learning, to enjoy challenge, and to tolerate ambiguity. In the end there are no certain answers.
-- Martina Horner

Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.
-- Plato

As a teacher I feel I have a moral obligation to help the children in my classroom grow toward becoming full human beings and to feel successful. Teaching cognitive skills is not enough...
-- Jean Medick

Learning to teach is a bigger job than universities, schools, experience, or personal disposition alone can accomplish.
-- Sharon Feiman-Nemser

In a completely rational society, the best of us would aspire to be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone could have.
-- Lee Iacocca

Don't set your wit against a child.
-- Jonathan Swift

It must be remembered that the purpose of education is not to fill the minds of students with facts... it is to teach them to think, if that is possible, and always to think for themselves.
-- Robert Hutchins

The secret of teaching is to appear to have known all your life what you learned this afternoon.
-- Anonymous

They may forget what you said but they will never forget how you made them feel.
-- Anonymous

The job of an educator is to teach students to see vitality in themselves.
-- Joseph Campbell

I hear, and I forget. I see, and I remember. I do, and I understand.
-- Chinese Proverb

In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made School Boards.
-- Mark Twain

Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire.
-- W. B. Yeats

The objective of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives.
-- Robert Maynard Hutchins

There is a brilliant child locked inside every student.
-- Marva Collins

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
-- Henry B. Adams

Information cannot replace education.
-- Earl Kiole

We all need someone who inspires us to do better than we know how.
-- Anonymous

When will the public cease to insult the teacher's calling with empty flattery? When will men who would never for a moment encourage their own sons to enter the work of the public schools cease to tell us that education is the greatest and noblest of all human callings?
-- William C. Bagley

The kids in our classroom are infinitely more significant than the subject matter we teach.
-- Meladee McCarty

Teaching is not a profession; it's a passion.
-- Unknown

Your heart is slightly bigger than the average human heart, but that's because you're a teacher.
-- Aaron Bacall

Aim for success, not perfection. Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life. Remember that fear always lurks behind perfectionism.
-- David M. Burns

A professor can never better distinguish himself in his work than by encouraging a clever pupil, for the true discoverers are among them, as comets amongst the stars.
-- Linnaeus

A teacher effects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
-- Henry Adams

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
-- Mark Twain

It is books that are the key to the wide world; if you can't do anything else, read all that you can.
-- Jane Hamilton

An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it.
-- Bill Bernbach

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
-- Aristotle

It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated.
-- Alec Bourne

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
-- Aristotle

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten
-- B. F. Skinner

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.
-- Gail Godwin

Education is the best provision for old age.
-- Aristotle

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.
-- Confucius

The mark of a true MBA is that he is often wrong but seldom in doubt.
-- Robert Buzzell

If I were asked ... to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of Americans ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply: To the superiority of their women.
-- Alexis de Tocqueville

Children need models rather than critics.
-- Joseph Joubert

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

It is the responsibility of every adult... to make sure that children hear what we have learned from the lessons of life and to hear over and over that we love them and that they are not alone
-- Marian Wright Edelman

Education is more than filling a child with facts. It starts with posing questions.
-- D.T. Max

If people did not do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.
-- Ludwig Wittgenstein

Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people may be engaged in.
-- Abraham Lincoln

It's okay to make mistakes. Mistakes are our teachers -- they help us to learn.
-- John Bradshaw

It's not what is poured into a student, but what is planted.
--Linda Conway

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
-- Albert Einstein

Instruction begins when you, the teacher, learn from the learner; put yourself in his place so that you may understand… what he learns and the way he understands it.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.
-- Thumper's father (Bambi 1942)

A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him.
-- James Baldwin

We're going to have the best-educated American people in the world.
-- Dan Quayle.

That is the difference between good teachers and great teachers: good teachers make the best of a pupil's means; great teachers foresee a pupil's ends.
-- Maria Callas

A word as to the education of the heart. We don't believe that this can be imparted through books; it can only be imparted through the loving touch of the teacher.
-- Cesar Chavez

The highest result of education is tolerance.
-- Helen Keller

My heart is singing for joy this morning. A miracle has happened! The light of understanding has shone upon my little pupil's mild, and behold, all things are changed.
-- Anne Sullivan

Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. Autograph your work with excellence.
-- Unknown

You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.
-- Clay P. Bedford

Take a deep breath, count to ten, and tackle each task one step at a time.
-- Linda Shalaway

Nothing is ever achieved without enthusiasm.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Learning is not a spectator sport.
-- Anonymous

In an effective classroom students should not only know what they are doing, they should also know why and how.
-- Harry Wong

The important thing is not to stop questioning.
--Albert Einstein

The whole world opened to me when I learned to read.
-- Mary McLeod Bethune

A gifted teacher is as rare as a gifted doctor, and makes far less money.
-- Unknown

A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.
-- Thomas Carruthers

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.
-- William Arthur Ward

All of us do not have equal talent, but all of us should have an equal opportunity to develop our talent.
-- John F. Kennedy

The man who can make hard things easy is the educator.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

What I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember. What I do, I understand.
-- Confucius

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
-- Gandhi

I am learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma.
-- Eartha Kitt

You learn something every day if you pay attention.
-- Ray LeBlond

Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.
-- Chinese Proverb

I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me.
-- Dudley Field Malone

You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one way.
-- Marvin Minsky

The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.
-- John Lubbock

People learn something every day, and a lot of times it's that what they learned the day before was wrong.
-- Bill Vaughan

Nothing is more powerful and liberating than knowledge.
-- William H. Gray III

Education cost money, but then so does ignorance.
-- Claus Moser

The liberally educated person is one who is able to resist the easy and preferred answers not because he is obstinate but because he knows others worthy of consideration.
-- Allan Bloom

Most teachers waste their time by asking questions which are intended to discover what a pupil does not know whereas the true art of questioning has for its purpose to discover what the pupil knows or is capable of knowing.
-- Albert Einstein

Freedom of teaching and of opinion in book or press is the foundation for the sound and natural development of any people.
-- Albert Einstein

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones.
-- Henry David Thoreau

Grade school is the snooze button on the clock radio of life.
-- John Rogers

The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.
-- B.B. King

Genius without education is like silver in the mine.
-- Benjamin Franklin

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

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
-- B.F. Skinner

The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.
-- Ralph M. Sockman

Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics. I can assure you that mine are still greater.
-- Albert Einstein

How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.
-- Alexander Dumas

I think the world is run by C students.
-- Al McGuire

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
-- Abraham Maslow

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
-- Aristotle

Higher education must lead the march back to the fundamentals of human relationships, to the old discovery that is ever new, that man does not live by bread alone.
-- John A. Hannah

I teach therefore I am.
-- Anonymous

Effective teachers seek feedback and consensus on their decisions and make sure that students understand.
-- Linda Shalaway

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
-- Margaret Mead

There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people.
-- Thomas Jefferson

The role of parents in the education of their children cannot be overestimated.
-- Mexican American Legal Defense Fun

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The site was created on October 25, 2002, by Dr. Bill Martin, who taught ED554 OL Modern Educational Practices, an online graduate course offered at Monmouth University, West Long Branch, NJ. The quotes and education collections were contributed by Erin Gunteski, Erin Monahan, Tiffani Monroe, Rebecca Novak, Ryan Monday, and Jill Fardella. Dr. Martin no longer updates the site. Last updated January 3, 2003.

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