Some of my favorite quotes about teaching...

As anyone who knows me knows, one of the biggest passions in my life is my work. Over time, I have found quotes about teaching, and decided since it was getting close to the new school year, I would post them here. I start with a quote of my own.

"Just because I have the big desk doesn't mean I have all the answers." - Charlotte Ann Wooden-Hillis

"Good teachers are those who know how little they know. Bad teachers are
those who think they know more than they don't know." - R. Verdi


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

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

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

" A teacher who is attempting to teach, without inspiring the pupil
with a desire to learn, is hammering on a cold iron." - Horace Mann
(1796-1859)

"Education costs money, but then so does ignorance." - Sir Claus Moser

"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

"Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one." -
Malcolm Forbes

"Education should turn out the pupil with something he knows well and
something he can do well." - Alfred North Whitehead

"Getting things done is not always what is most important. There is value
in allowing others to learn, even if the task is not accomplished as quickly,
efficiently or effectively." - R.D. Clyde

"Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of
right answers." - Josef Albers

"I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think." -
Socrates

"If the child is not learning the way you are teaching, then you must
teach in the way the child learns" - Rita Dunn

"If what you're doing isn't working, try something else!" - NLP adage

"I may have said the same thing before... but my explanation, I am sure,
will always be different." - Oscar Wilde

"I put the relation of a fine teacher to a student just below the
relation of a mother to a son." - Thomas Wolfe

"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." - J. Bronowski, The Ascent of Man

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

"Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is
demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they
know it just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, teachers" -
Richard Bach

"Men learn while they teach." - Lucius A. Seneca

"No matter how good teaching may be, each student must take the
responsibility for his own education." - John Carolus S. J.

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

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

"Spoonfeeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of
the spoon" - E. M. Forster

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

"Teach your children by what you are, not just by what you say" - Jane
Revell & Susan Norman

"The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to
learn." - Cicero

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

"The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and
inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself." - Edward
Bulwer-Lytton

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

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

"There are no difficult students - just students who don't want to do it
your way" - Jane Revell & Susan Norman

" 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." - Kahlil Gibran

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

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

"To teach is to learn twice." - Joseph Joubert

"Try to present at least three options. One is no choice at
all. Two creates a dilemma. With three you begin to have real choice
and flexibility" - Jane Revell & Susan Norman

"We think too much about effective methods of teaching and not enough
about effective methods of learning." - John Carolus S. J.

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

"Who dares to teach must never cease to learn." - John Cotton Dana

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

My greatest wish is to be able to tell each and every student I've had how much they mean to me, and how much they have taught me. Teaching is one of the greatest blessings of my life, and even when it is stressful, scary and frenetic I love every second of it. Here's to a new school year, and to a long life of learning for us all.

Take care,

Charlotte