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

- Gail Godwin

 

Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?

- Clarence Darrow

 

By viewing the old we learn the new

Chinese Proverb

 

 

 

They know enough who know how to learn.

Henry Adams 

 

 

I have gathered a posie of other men's flowers and only the thread that bonds them is my own.

Michel Montaigne

 

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

Henry Adams

 

Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.

Josef Albers

 
 

The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influences...

Amos Alcott 
 
 

You can't direct the wind but you can adjust the sails.

Anonymous 
 
 

Even the clearest water appears opaque at great depth.

Anonymous 
 
 

We think of the effective teachers we have had over the years with a sense of recognition, but those who have touched our huma

Education is the best viaticum of old age.

Aristotle

 


Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted... but
to weigh and consider.

Francis Bacon 

 

 

Out of monuments, names, words proverbs ...and the like, we do save and recover somewhat from the deluge of time.

Francis Bacon  

 

 

We think of the effective teachers we have had over the years with a sense of recognition, but those who have touched our humanity we remember with a deep sense of gratitude.

- Anonymous student  

 
Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man and writing an exact man. 
Francis Bacon 
 
You can observe a lot by just looking around.
Yogi Berra 

 

 
 
Opposites are not contradictory but complementary.
Niels Bohr 
 
 
It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.
Jacob Bronowski 
 
 
A man should first direct himself in the way he should go. Only then should he  instruct others.
Buddha 
 
We think too much about effective methods of teaching and not enough about  effective methods of learning.
John Carolus S.J.
 
 
No matter how good teaching may be, each student must take the responsibility for his own education.
John Carolus S.J. 
 
 
The job of an educator is to teach students to see the vitality in themselves. 
Joseph Campbell 
 
 
Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken. 
Albert Camus 
 
 
I hear, and I forget. I see, and I remember. I do, and I understand.
Chinese Proverb 
 
 
Give me a fish and I eat for a day. Teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime. 
Chinese Proverb 
 
 
The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
Winston Churchill 
 
 
What greater or better gift can we offer the republic than to teach and instruct our youth.
Marcus T. Cicero 
 
 
I am not ashamed to confess that I am ignorant of what I do not know.
Marcus T. Cicero 
 
 
If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.
Marcus T. Cicero 
 
 
The important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle.
Pierre de Coubertin 
 
 
To think is to differ.
Clarence Darrow 

 

 
 
The chief cause of human errors is to be found in the prejudices picked up in childhood.
Rene Descartes 

 

 
 
The origin of thinking is some perplexity, confusion or doubt.
John Dewey

 

 
 
One can think effectively only when one is willing to endure suspense and to undergo the trouble of searching.
John Dewey 

 

 
  

We

There is no education like adversity.
Benjamin Disraeli  
 
 
Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depricate agitation, are men who  want crops without plowing the ground.
Frederick Douglass 

 

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

 

 
 
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simplier.
Albert Einstein 

 

 
No one can become really educated without having pursued some study in which he took no interest ...
T.S. Eliot 

 

 
 
Reinventing the wheel is a process.
Rashid Elisha 

 

 
 
To arrive at the simple is difficult.
Rashid Elisha

 

 
 
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.
George Eliot (Mary-Ann Evans) 

 

 
 
Whoso neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead to the future.
Euripides 
 
Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.
Henry Ford 

 

 

We think

Awaken people's curiosity. It is enough to open minds, do not overload them. Put there just a spark.
Anatole France 

of the effective teachers we have had over the years with a sense of recognition, but those who have touched our humanity we remember with a deep sense of gratitude.Anonymous student  

 

W

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.
Sigmund Freud 

e  

 
I have an infamously low capacity for visualizing relationships, which made the study of geometry and all subjects derived from
it impossible for me.
Sigmund Freud 

 

 
When inspiration does not come to me, I go half way to meet it. 
Sigmund Freud 

 

 
You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.
Galielo Galilei 

 

 
There is more to life than increasing its speed.
Mohandes Gandhi

 

 
Vague and nebulous is the beginning of all things, but not their end.
Kahlil Gibran

 

 
A talent is formed in stillness, a character in the world's torrent.
Johann W. Goethe 

 

  
An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher.
John W. Gardner 

 

 
If you do not expect it, you will not find the unexpected, for it is hard to find and difficult.
Heraclitus 

 

 
People learn more quickly by doing something or seeing something done.
Gilbert Highet 

 

 
Education can be dangerous. It is very difficult to make it not dangerous. In  fact, it is almost impossible.
Robert M. Hutchins 

 

 
Sometimes one man with courage is a majority.
Andrew Jackson 

 

 
In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering.
William James 

 

 
These then are my last words to you: be not afraid of life. Believe that life  is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
William James 

 

 
It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance... and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its 
process.
Henry James Jr. 

 

 
Education is man's going forward from cocksure ignorance to thoughtful uncertainty.
Kenneth G. Johnson 

 

 
Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its values only to its scarcity. 
Samuel Johnson 

 

 
To teach is to learn twice.
Joseph Joubert
 
Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you  cannot make yourself as you wish to be.
Thomas A. Kempis 

 

 

Creative activity is not a superimposed, extraneous task against which the body, or brain protests, but an orchestration of ... joyful doing.We think of the effective teachers we have had over the years with a sense of recognition, but those who have t
Gyorgy Kepes member with a deep sense of gratitude.Anonymous student  

 

W

Where there is an open mind there will always be a frontier.
Charles F. Kettering 

e  

 
There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.
Alfred Korzybski 

 

 
When asked what learning was the most necessary, he said, "Not to unlearn what you have learned!"
Diogenes Laertius  

 

 
Learning is never done without errors and defeat.
Vladimir Lenin

 

 
Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.
Vladimir Lenin 

 

 
I have been maturing as a teacher. New experiences bring new sensitivities and flexibility...
Howard Lester 

 

 
To do just the opposite is a form of imitation.
Georg Lichtenberg 

 

 

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  

 

 
Certain subjects yield a general power that may be applied in any direction and should be studied by all.
John Locke

 

 
A note of music gains significance from the silence on either side.
Ann Morrow Lindberg 

 

 
To define is to destroy, to suggest is to create.
Stephane Mallarme 

 

 

Education...beyond all other devices of human origin, is a great equalizer of conditions of men --the balance wheel of the social
machinery...It does better than to disarm the poor of their hostility toward the rich; it prevents being poor.
Horace Mann 

 

 
People's behavior makes sense if you think about it inn terms of their goals,  needs, and motives.
Thomas Mann 

 

 

The young don't know what age is, and the old forget what youth was.
Seumas MacManus 

 

 
Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.
Michelangelo 

 

 
Let the potential artist in our children come to life that they may surmount  industrial monotonies and pressures.
Barbara Morgan 

 

 
Teachers should guide without dictating, and participate without dominating.
C.B. Neblette

 

 
The critical factor is not class size but rather the nature of the teaching as it affects learning.
C.B. Neblette

 

 
How many writers are there... who, breaking up their subject into details,  destroy its life, and defraud us of the whole by their anxiety about the parts.
 Cardinal Newman 

 

 
Knowledge rests on knowledge; what is new is meaningful because it departs  slightly from what was known before.
Robert Oppenheimer

 

 
Only the mind cannot be sent into exile.
Ovid 

 

 
In the fields of observation, chance favors only the prepared mind.
Louis Pasteur 

 

 
The beginning is the most important part of the work.
Plato  

 

 
An object in possession seldom contains the same charm that it had in pursuit.
Pliny the Younger

 

 
The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited.
Plutarch 

 

 
A man should never be ashamed to own he has been wrong, which is but saying in other words that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.
Alexander Pope 

 

 
The basic idea behind teaching is to teach people what they need to know.
Carl Rogers 

 

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

 

 
Men learn while they teach.
Lucius A. Seneca 

 

 
The great pilot can sail even when his canvass is rent.
Lucius A. Seneca 

 

 
Wonder is the desire for knowledge.
St. Thomas Aquinas 

 

 
It is not often that we use language correctly; usually we use it incorrectly,  though we understand each others meaning.
St. Augustine 

 

 
I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery 

 

 
It is such a secret place, the land of tears.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery 

 

 
A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.
George Santayana  

 

 
Always to see the general in the particular is the very foundation of genius.
Arthur Schopenhauer 

 

 
To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching.
George Bernard Shaw 

 

 
The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.
Socrates  

 

 
One must learn by doing the thing; for though you think you know it, you haveno certainty, until you try.
Sophocles 

 

 
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
Henry David Thoreau 

 

 

W

It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.
Harry S. Truman 
 
It is easy to spot an informed man -- his opinions are just like your own.
Miguel de Unamuno 
 
The best way to know life is to love many things.
Vincent Van Gogh 
 
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. 
H.G. Wells 
 
An artist is always out of step with the time. He has to be.
Orson Welles 
 
Education should turn out the pupil with something he knows well and something he can do well.
Alfred North Whitehead 
 
The limits of your language are the limits of your world. 
Ludwig Wittgenstein 
 
I put the relation of a fine teacher to a student just below the relation of a mother to a son...
Thomas Wolfe 
 
Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher.
William Wordsworth 
 
The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated in  quotations.
Benjamin Disraeli
 

Collected by Richard D. Zakia