217 Best Inspirational Quotes For Teachers
Teaching is a noble profession that shapes the minds and hearts of students. But being a teacher is not an easy task, and it often requires a great deal of hard work, patience, and dedication. Inspirational quotes for teachers are a great source of motivation and encouragement. They can inspire and uplift teachers, reminding them of the positive impact they have on the lives of their students. These quotes can help teachers find the strength to keep going, even when faced with challenges. In this article, we will explore some of the most powerful and inspiring quotes for teachers.

- Good teachers know how to bring out the best in students. — Charles Kuralt
- “One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.” – Malala Yousafzai
- Teaching is the one profession that creates all other professions.
- “When educating the minds of our youth, we must not forget to educate their hearts.”- Dalai Lama
- . Teachers affect eternity; no one can tell where their influence stops. – Henry Brooks Adams
- “A good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination, and instil a love of learning.” – Brad Henry
- . If you have to put someone on a pedestal, put teachers. They are society’s heroes. — Guy Kawasaki
- The best teachers teach from the heart, not from the book.
- “It is the supreme art of a teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.”- Albert Einstein
- . Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition. — Jacques Barzun
- “Intelligence plus character– that is the goal of true education.”- Martin Luther King Jr.
- . It takes a big heart to help shape little minds.
- “The secret in education lies in respecting the student.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- . Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best. – Bob Talbert
- “Great teachers empathise with kids, respect them, and believe that each one has something special that can be built upon.”- Ann Liberman
- . The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery. – Mark Van Doren
- “A teacher is a compass that activates the magnets of curiosity, knowledge, and wisdom in the pupils.”- Ever Garrison
- . The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. – Amos Bronson Alcott
- “Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.”- William Butler Yeats
- . Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace. – Confucius
- In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less. – Lee Iacocca
- “One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings.” – Carl Jung
- . So what does a good teacher do? Create tension — but just the right amount. — Donald Norman
- “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.” – Malcolm X
- . Teaching is the greatest act of optimism. – Colleen Wilcox
- “Everyone who remembers his own education remembers teachers, not methods and techniques. The teacher is the heart of the educational system.” – Sidney Hook
- . Teaching is a calling too. And I’ve always thought that teachers in their way are holy — angels leading their flocks out of the darkness. ― Jeannette Walls
- The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” – William Arthur Ward
- . I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework. – Lily Tomlin
- “Children are likely to live up to what you believe in them.” – Lady Bird Johnson
- . 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. — Khalil Gibran
- “The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives.” – Robert M. Hutchins
- . I am not a teacher, but an awakener. – Robert Frost
- The influence of teachers extends beyond the classroom, well into the future. — F. Sionil Jose
- “The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.” – B.B. King
- . Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. – John Dewey
- “Anyone who does anything to help a child in his life is a hero to me.” – Fred Rogers
- . If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday, we rob them of tomorrow. – John Dewey
- How wonderful it is that we need not wait a single moment before starting to change the world. — Anne Frank
- “A good teacher is like a candle — it consumes itself to light the way for others.” – Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
- . I will venture to maintain that where the teacher is not pleasing to the pupil, there is no education. — Xenophon
- “I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.” – Alexander the Great
- . I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework. — Lily Tomlin
- “What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches.” – Karl Menninger
- . 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 him which he finds hard to answer. – Alice Wellington Rollins
- Let us remember: one book, one pen, one child and one teacher can change the world. — Malala Yousafzai
- “Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best.” – Bob Talbert
- . Teachers, I believe, are the most responsible and important members of society because their professional efforts affect the fate of the Earth. – Helen Caldicott
- “Give me a fish and I will eat for a day. Teach me to fish and I will eat for a lifetime.” – Chinese Proverb
- . It is a greater work to educate a child, in the true and large sense of that phrase, than to rule a state. — William Ellery Channing
- “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” – John Dewey
- . It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge. – Albert Einstein
- Most of us end up with no more than five or six people who remember us. Teachers have thousands of people who remember them for the rest of their lives. — Andy Rooney
- “Being able to help someone learn something is a talent.” – Margaret Riel
- . Teachers are our greatest public servants; they spend their lives educating our young people and shaping our nation for tomorrow. — Solomon Ortiz
- A good education can change anyone, a good teacher can change everything.
- “Teaching is not just a job. It is a human service, and it must be thought of as a mission.”- Dr. Ralph Tyler
- . The duties of a teacher are neither jew nor small, but they elevate the mind and give energy to the character. — Dorothea Dix
- “The great teacher is not the man who supplies the most facts, but the one in whose presence we become different people.”- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- . Teachers encourage minds to think, hands to create, and hearts to love.
- A good education can change anyone, a good teacher can change everything.
- “The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.” – Eric Hoffer
- Those who know, do. Those who understand, teach.“- Aristotle
- “The greatest sign of success for a teacher… is to be able to say, ‘The children are now working as if I did not exist.’” – Maria Montessori
- “What greater or better gift can we offer the republic than to teach and instruct our youth?” – Marcus T. Cicero
- There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fill you with so much quail shot that you can’t move, and the kind that just gives you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies. ― Robert Frost
- “When we strive to become better teachers than we are, everyone in our classroom becomes better too.”- Robert John Meehan
- . Great teachers empathise with kids, respect them, and believe that each one has something special that can be built upon.
- “Your heart is slightly bigger than the average human heart, but that’s because you’re a teacher.” – Aaron Bacall
- . If a child can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn. – Ignacio ‘Nacho’ Estrada
- “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”- Henry Adams
- . A good teacher is like a candle, it consumes itself to light the way for others.
- You can get help from teachers, but you are going to have to learn a lot by yourself, sitting alone in a room. — Dr. Seuss
- “Teacher appreciation makes the world of education go around.” – Helen Peters
- . The most valuable resource that all teachers have is each other. Without collaboration our growth is limited to our own perspectives.
- “He who opens a school door closes a prison.” – Victor Hugo
- . I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. — Maya Angelou
- “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.” – Khalil Gibran
- . Without teachers, life would have no class.
- The best teachers are those who tell you where to look, but don’t tell you what you see.
- Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.” – Jacques Barzun
- . Teachers change the world, one child at a time.
- Students work hardest for teachers they like and respect. When I’m asked, “How do I get the students to like and respect me?” my immediate response is , “Like and respect them first.” – Dr. Debbie Silver
- “Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre.” – Gail Godwin
- . The day you’re willing to veer off the lesson plan, follow a kid’s lead, and learn with your students is the day you really become a teacher.
- “Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.” – Voltaire
- . The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. – William A. Ward
- Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time.” (Chinese Proverb)
- “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” – William Arthur Ward
- “If kids come to us from strong, healthy functioning families, it makes our job easier. If they do not come to us from strong, healthy, functioning families, it makes our job more important.” (Barbara Coloroso)
- “The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.” – Mark Van Doren
- “What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.” (George Bernard Shaw)
- “If you have to put someone on a pedestal, put teachers. They are society’s heroes.”- Guy Kawasaki
- “We’re trying to give the young people something that can help them, and we don’t know exactly what it ought to be.” (Wendell Berry)
- “Education is the key to success in life, and teachers make a lasting impact in the lives of their students.” – Solomon Ortiz
- “Teaching is the greatest act of optimism.” (Colleen Wilcox)
- “Students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” (Anonymous)
- “One good teacher in a lifetime may sometimes change a delinquent into a solid citizen.” – Philip Wylie
- “The dream begins, most of the time, with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you on to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called truth.” (Dan Rather)
- “Teachers teach because they care. Teaching young people is what they do best. It requires long hours, patience, and care.” – Horace Mann
- “Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theatre.” (Gail Goldwin)
- “Free the child’s potential, and you will transform him into the world.” – Maria Montessori
- “The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.” (Mark Van Doren)
- “I was lucky that I met the right mentors and teachers at the right moment.” – James Levine
- “Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.” (Jacques Barzun)
- “Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace.” – Confucius
- “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” (William Butler Yeats)
- “Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.” – John C. Dana
- “I’m not sayin’ I’m gonna change the world, but I guarantee that I will spark the brain that will.” (Tupac Shakur)
- “Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher.”- Japanese Proverb
- “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” (John Dewey)
- “Students don’t know how much you know until they know how much you care.” – John C. Maxwell
- “I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. It might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.” (John Steinbeck)
- “Good teachers know how to bring out the best in students.”— Charles Kuralt
- “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” (William Ward)
- “What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul.”- Joseph Addison
- “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” (Einstein)
- “If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday, we rob them of tomorrow.”- John Dewy
- “We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
- “To teach is to learn twice.”- Joseph Joubert
- “There is no failure. Only feedback.” (Robert Allen)
- “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”- Benjamin Franklin
- “The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.” (Plato)
- “The roots of education are bitter but the fruit is sweet.”- Aristotle
- “If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people.” (Chinese Proverb)
- “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” ― Mahatma Gandhi
- “Death is not the greatest loss. The greatest loss is what dies inside while still alive. Never surrender.” (Tupac Shakur)
- “A good teacher is like a candle – it consumes itself to light the way for others.” (Mustafa Kemal Atatürk)
- “Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.” ― C.S. Lewis
- “The more that you read, the more things you will know, the more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” (Dr. Seuss)
- “A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.” – Mark Twain
- “I am not a teacher, but an awakener.” (Robert Frost)
- “Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.”- Edward Everett
- “Nine-tenths of education is encouragement.” – Anatole France
- “Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best.” (Bob Talbert)
- “A teacher’s job is to take a bunch of live wires and see that they are well-grounded.”- D. Martin
- “You cannot teach a crab to walk straight.” (Aristophenes)
- “I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.”- Lily Tomlin
- “If a child can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.” (Ignacio ‘Nacho’ Estrada)
- “Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.” – Josef Albers
- “You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.” (Khalil Gibran)
- “He who opens a school door closes a prison.” – Victor Hugo
- “I think the teaching profession contributes more to the future of our society than any other single profession.”- John Wooden
- “In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less.” (Lee Iacocca)
- “Be a wonderful role model because you will be the window through which many children will see their future.”- Thomas Mckinnon
- “I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.” (Socrates)
- “The best teachers are those who show you where to look but don’t tell you what to see.”- Alexandra K. Trenfor
- “Remember that failure is an event, not a person.” (Zig Ziglar)
- “Teachers appreciate being appreciated, for teacher appreciation is their highest award.”- William Prince
- “It may be that when we no longer know which way to go that we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.” (Wendell Berry)
- “If you can read this, thank a teacher.” – American proverb
- “Learning is not a spectator sport.” (D. Blocher)
- “We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.” Cynthia Ozick
- “The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it” (Samuel Johnson)
- “Most of us end up with no more than five or six people who remember us. Teachers have thousands of people who remember them for the rest of their lives.”- Andy Rooney
- “Never discourage anyone…who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.” (Plato)
- “A good criterion for measuring success in life is the number of people you have made happy.” – Robert Lumsden
- “The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.” (Henri Bergson)
- “The teacher … must have a kind of faith that the child will reveal himself through work.”- Maria Montessori
- “I never teach my pupils. I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” (Einstein)
- “What we learn with pleasure we never forget.” – Alfred Mercier
- “Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace.” (Confucius)
- “The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realise, the less I know.” – Michel Legrand
- “There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it.” (Charles F. Kettering)
- “In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.”- Phil Collins
- “I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.” (Lily Tomlin)
- “To aid life, leaving it free, however, to unfold itself, that is the basic task of the educator.”- Maria Montessori
- “What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches.” (Karl Meninger)
- “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”- Margaret Mead
- “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” (Thomas Edison)
- “Thought flows in terms of stories–stories about events, stories about people, and stories about intentions and achievements. The best teachers are the best storytellers. We learn in the form of stories.” (Frank Martin)
- “Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” —Marcel Proust
- “You can’t direct the wind but you can adjust the sails.” (Anonymous)
- “Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.”- GK Chesterton
- “I can’t believe I just saw my teacher at the grocery store! I thought she lived in her classroom! –Heidi McDonald
- “Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of becoming.”- Goethe
- “Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.” (E. M. Forster)
- “The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.”- Sydney J. Harris
- “If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday, we rob them of tomorrow.” (John Dewey)
- “What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul.” ― Joseph Addison
- “The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence.” (Amos Bronson Alcott)
- “Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.” ― William Butler Yeats
- “The teachers who get “burned out” are not the ones who are constantly learning, which can be exhilarating, but those who feel they must stay in control and ahead of the students at all times.” (Frank Martin)
- “The task of the excellent teacher is to stimulate ‘apparently ordinary’ people to unusual effort. The tough problem is not in identifying winners: it is in making winners out of ordinary people.” K. Patricia Cross
- “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” ― Margaret Mead
- “Give me a fish and I will eat for a day. Teach me to fish and I will eat for a lifetime.” – Chinese Proverb
- Bonus: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)
- “It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.”- Albert Einstein
- “Teaching is the greatest act of optimism.” ― Colleen Wilcox
- “Nine-tenths of education is encouragement.”- Anatole France
- “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”- Henry Brooks Adams
- “Being able to help someone learn something is a talent.” – Margaret Riel
- “One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.” – Malala Yousafzai
- “A good teacher can inspire hope; ignite the imagination, and instil a love of learning.” – Brad Henry
- “If you can read this, thank a teacher.”- American Proverb
- “Everyone who remembers his own education remembers teachers, not methods and techniques. The teacher is the heart of the educational system.” – Sidney Hook
- “When educating the minds of our youth, we must not forget to educate their hearts.”- Dalai Lama
- “Teaching is not just a job. It is a human service, and it must be thought of as a mission.”- Dr. Ralph Tyler
- “A good teacher is like a candle – it consumes itself to light the way for others.”- Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
- “Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher.” – Japanese Proverb
- “A teacher is a compass that activates the magnets of curiosity, knowledge, and wisdom in the pupils.”- Ever Garrison
- “Those who know, do. Those who understand, teach.”- Aristotle
- “It’s easy to make a buck. It’s a lot tougher to make a difference.” – Tom Brokaw
- “To teach is to learn twice.” – Joseph Joubert
- “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” – William Arthur Ward
- “What greater or better gift can we offer the republic than to teach and instruct our youth?” – Marcus T. Cicero
- “They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.”- Carl W. Buechner
- “One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings.”- Carl Jung
- “Children are likely to live up to what you believe in them.” – Lady Bird Johnson
- “When we strive to become better teachers than we are, everyone in our classroom becomes better too.”- Robert John Meehan
- “The great teacher is not the man who supplies the most facts, but the one in whose presence we become different people.”- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “Great teachers empathise with kids, respect them, and believe that each one has something special that can be built upon.” – Ann Lieberman
- “What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches.” – Karl Menninger
- “Students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”- John C. Maxwell
- “I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.” – Alexander the Great
- “Teacher appreciation makes the world of education go around.” – Helen Peters
conclusion
In conclusion, inspirational quotes for teachers are not only important for motivating and encouraging teachers, but also for inspiring students to achieve their full potential. They can help teachers maintain their passion and commitment towards their profession, even during difficult times. Teachers play a critical role in shaping the future of our society, and therefore, their efforts and hard work should be acknowledged and appreciated. Inspirational quotes serve as a reminder of the importance of their work, and encourage them to continue making a positive impact in the lives of their students. With the right inspiration and motivation, teachers can change the world, one student at a tim.