Teachers are everyday superheroes. They’re so awesome that some of history’s brightest minds have been compelled to wax lyrical about them. This inspired us to collect our favourite quotes about teachers and teaching for you to enjoy.
Whether you’re a teacher, trainer, instructor or an educator of any type — there’s a quote here for you to enjoy. Likewise, whether you work in schools, higher education or even the corporate world (our speciality!), you’ll find nuggets of wisdom aplenty. And if this doesn’t satisfy your appetite, then there’s yet more to explore:
- 70 Powerful Quotes About Learning
- 70 Moving Quotes About Motivation
- 65 Quotes About Workplace Learning
Our list includes insights from Aristotle and his student, multiple great authors, spiritual leaders, educationalists and more! With that said, let’s start the countdown of the best teaching quotes!
Teaching Quotes: The All-Time Top 20 Ranked!
1. “The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.” — Mark Van Doren
2. “The job of an educator is to teach students to see vitality in themselves.” — Joseph Campbell
3. “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” — Henry Adams
4. “Teaching is the greatest act of optimism.” — Colleen Wilcox
5. “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” — William Arthur Ward
6. “No one should teach who is not in love with teaching.” — Margaret Elizabeth Sangster
7. “The best teachers are those who show you where to look but don’t tell you what to see.” — Alexandra K. Trenfor
8. “Teachers can change lives with just the right mix of chalk and challenges.” — Joyce Meyer
9. “It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” — Albert Einstein
10. “More important than the curriculum is the question of the methods of teaching and the spirit in which teaching is given.” — Bertrand Russell
11. “Teaching is a great way to keep learning.” — Matthea Harvey
12. “When one teaches, two learn.” — Robert Heinlein
13. “A good teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.” — Thomas Carruthers
14. “The teacher’s task is to initiate the learning process and then get out of the way.” — John Warren
15. “Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.” — Jacques Barzun
16. “You can’t stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.” — J.D. Salinger
17. “Teaching is the essential profession, the one that makes all professions possible.” — David Haselkorn
18. “A teacher who loves learning earns the right and the ability to help others learn.” — Ruth Beechick
19. “A teacher’s job is to take a bunch of live wires and see that they are well-grounded.” — Darwin Martin
20. “Teachers have three loves: love of learning, love of learners, and the love of bringing the first two loves together.” — Scott Hayden
Teaching Quotes: Honourable Mentions
21. “In teaching it is the method and not the content that is the message.” — Ashley Montagu
22. “The most effective teacher will always be biased, for the chief force in teaching is confidence and enthusiasm.” — Joyce Cary
23. “What an educator does in teaching is to make it possible for the students to become themselves.” — Paulo Freire
24. “Your worst enemy is your best teacher.” — Gautama Buddha
25. “Educate the children and it won’t be necessary to punish the men.” — Pythagoras
26. “Teaching is the highest form of understanding.” — Aristotle
27. “I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.” — Alexander the Great (one of history’s greatest military minds and Aristotle’s student)
28. “Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.” — Gail Godwin
29. “Nine-tenths of education is encouragement.” — Anatole France
30. “A good teacher is like a candle – it consumes itself to light the way for others.” — Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
31. “The greatest teachers are the ones without an agenda.” — James Pierce
32. “Education is the transmission of civilization.” — Will Durant
33. “A master can tell you what he expects of you. A teacher, though, awakens your own expectations.” — Patricia Neal
34. “Teaching is an instinctual art, mindful of potential, craving of realizations, a pausing, seamless process.” — A. Bartlett Giamatti
35. “The best education is not given to students; it is drawn out of them.” — Gerald Belcher
36. “Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.” — Josef Albers
37. “Teaching is the perpetual end and office of all things. Teaching, instruction is the main design that shines through the sky and earth.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
38. “Any genuine teaching will result, if successful, in someone’s knowing how to bring about a better condition of things than existed earlier.” — John Dewey
39. “When the untapped potential of a student meets the liberating art of a teacher, a miracle unfolds.” — Mary Hatwood Futrell
40. “In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day’s work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years.” — Jacques Barzun
41. “The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.” — C.S. Lewis
42. “The best teachers impart knowledge through sleight of hand, like a magician.” — Kate Betts
43. “We teach best what we most need to learn.” — Richard Bach
44. “When you study great teachers… you will learn much more from their caring and hard work than from their style.” — William Glasser
45. “A true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence.” — Amos Bronson Alcott
46. “The teacher must be an actor, an artist, passionately in love with his work.” — Anton Chekhov
47. “A good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination and instill a love of learning.” — Brad Henry
48. “A teacher is a compass that activates the magnets of curiosity, knowledge and wisdom in the pupils.” — Ever Garrison
49. “One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings.” — Carl Jung
50. “I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.” — Socrates
51. “Teachers teach someone something, in that order.” — Samuel Natale
52. “To know how to suggest is the art of teaching.” — Henri-Frédéric Amiel
53. “Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.” — John Steinbeck
54. “Proper teaching is recognised 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.” — Frank Herbert
55. “The best teacher lodges an intent not in the mind but in the heart.” — Anne Michaels
56. “So what does a good teacher do? Create tension – but just the right amount.” — Donald Norman
57. “Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best.” — Bob Talbert
58. “What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches.” — Karl Menninger
59. “The teacher must adopt the role of facilitator not content provider.” — Lev S. Vygotsky
60. “A good teacher does something more than teaching; he makes you start learning.” — Raheel Farooq
Final Words
There you have it. 60 spectacular teaching quotes that underline just how important teachers are. If you’re anything like us, this list will make you want to reach out to an old teacher or mentor to say thank you!
Do you have a favourite teaching quote? Did we miss a good one? Let us know across our social media channels (LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook).
Want more quotes? Check out our 70 quotes about learning, 70 quotes about motivation and 65 quotes about workplace learning.
And don’t forget to give any teachers in your life a high five next time you see them!
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