William Arthur Ward: “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”

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

Sidney J. Harris: “Good teaching must be slow enough so that it is not confusing, and fast enough so that it is not boring.”

Rudolf Steiner: “The need for imagination, as a sense of truth, and as a feeling of responsibility–these are three forces which are the very nerve of education.”

John Lubbock: “The important thing so not so much that every child should be taught as that every child should be given the wish to learn.”

Quotes to Regard Teaching as an Artform

Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Teaching is the perpetual end and office of all things. Teaching, instruction is the main design that shines through the sky and earth.”

Phyllis Brooks: “Teaching is truth mediated by personality.”

Herbert Kohl: “One of the beauties of teaching is that there is no limit to one’s growth as a teacher, just as there is no knowing beforehand how much your students can learn.”

Bell Hooks: “I entered the classroom with the conviction that it was crucial for me and every other student to be an active participant, not a passive consumer…education that connects the will to know with the will to become.”

Simone Weil: “The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know.”

Quotes that Link Purpose to Teaching

Malcolm Forbes: “Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.”

Elbert Hubbard: “The object of teaching a child is to enable him [or her] to get along without his [or her] teacher.”

Carl Jung: “One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is a vital element for the growing plan and for the soul of the child.”

Emma Goldman: “No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, kindness, and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.

Grayson Kirk: “The most important function of education at any level is to develop the personality of the individual and the significance of his life to himself and to others. This is the basic architecture of a life; the rest is ornamentation and decoration of the structure.”

Quotes to Inspire Teachers to Teach their Students to be Critical

Robert Hutchins: “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, tf that is possible, and always to think for themselves.”

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

Alice Wellington Rollins: “The test of a good teacher is not how many questions he can ask his pupils that they will answer readily, but how many questions he inspires them to ask which he finds it hard to answer.”

Josef Albers: “Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.”

Gerard Belcher: “The best education is not given to students; it is drawn out of them.”

Quotes on the Difficulty on Teaching

John Ruskin: “Education…is a painful, continual, and difficult work to be done in kindness, by watching, by warning…by praise, but above all, by example.”

Ron Edmonds: “We can, whenever and wherever we choose, successfully teach all children whose schooling is of interest to us. We already know more than we need to know in order to do that. Whether or not we do it must finally depend on how we feel about the fact we haven’t so far.”

William Glasser: “Effective teaching may be the hardest job there is.”

Alastair Cook: “A pro is someone who can do great work when he doesn’t feel like it.”

Jacques Barzun: “Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.”