women standing in front of children photo

75+ Inspirational Quotes for Teachers

Teachers are often looked at as society’s heroes, for they have the opportunity to change children’s lives with a good education. Ideal teachers bring joy and knowledge into a young person’s life that inspires their days in new ways. However, just like anyone else, teachers need inspiration too; inspiration to keep teaching, inspiration for their teaching, etc.

The inspirational quotes for teachers listed below are perfect for sharing with your favorite teacher to brighten their day. These quotes are also great for anyone in the teaching profession to use when they’re feeling down and need a motivational quote or inspirational quote to get them through. Whether you’re a kid looking for inspiring quotes to share with your professor or an English teacher looking for some inspirational teacher quotes, you’ve come to the right place!

Teaching Quotes to Uplift an Educator‘s Bad Day

“A good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination, and instill a love of learning.”

-Brad Henry

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

Albert Einstein

“The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.”

Aristotle

“The teacher is the one who gets the most out of the lessons, and the true teacher is the learner.”

-Elbert Hubbard

“Teachers can change lives with just the right mix of chalk and challenges.”

-Joyce Meyer

“One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.”

-Malala Yousafzai

“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”

-William Arthur Ward

“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. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.”

-John Steinbeck

“The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterward.”

-Anatole France

“A teacher is a compass that activates the magnets of curiosity, knowledge, and wisdom in the pupils.”

-Ever Garrison

“A teacher affects eternity; he [or she] can never tell where his influence stops.”

-Henry B. Adams

“The greatest use of a life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.”

-William James

“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

“What greater joy can a teacher feel than to witness a child’s success?”

-Michelle L. Graham

“Everyone who remembers his own education remembers teachers, not methods, and techniques. The teacher is the heart of the educational system.”

-Sidney Hook

“Those who know, do. Those who understand, teach.”

-Aristotle

Growth Mindset Quotes to Motivate Fellow Teachers

“Go out on a limb. That’s where the fruit is.”

-Frank Scully

motivation

“You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.”

-Ray Bradbury

“If you care about something enough, it’s going to make you cry. But you have to use it. Use your tears. Use your pain. Use your fear. Get mad.”

-Sherman Alexie

“Don’t give up. Don’t give up on your story. Don’t give up on the people you love. Hope is real. Love is real. It’s all worth fighting for.”

-Jamie Tworkowski

“From time to time, trace the scars life has left you. It will remind you that at one point, you fought for something. You believed.”

Bianca Sparacino

“We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.”

-Cynthia Ozick

“Life is not a series of problems to be solved; it’s a journey that you should be fascinated by.”

Brianna Wiest

motivation

“It’s okay to lose, as long as you don’t lose the lesson.”

-Brandon Steiner

“Good morning. How frightening every day is, & how dazzling. May we have what we need. May we face the terrors head-on, & never alone. Eyes up. Let’s go.”

-Esmé Weijun Wang

“Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass. It’s about learning how to dance in the rain.”

-Vivian Greene

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”

-Mahatma Gandhi

“In this life, there is always time to make a comeback.”

-Dorothy Lasky

“There is no experience from which you cannot learn something.”

Eleanor Roosevelt

“We are all failures – at least the best of us are.”

-J.M. Barrie

“People are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of.”

-Paulo Coelho

motivation

Teacher Appreciation Quotes to Brighten Your Teacher’s Day

“Your heart is slightly bigger than the average human heart, but that’s because you’re a teacher.”

-Aaron Bacall

“Teaching is the greatest act of optimism.”

-Colleen Wilcox

“The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.”

-Mark Van Doren

“Teaching is truth mediated by personality.”

-Phyllis Brooks

“Not all superheroes wear capes; some have teaching degrees.”

-Unknown

“Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.”

-John C. Dana

“When the untapped potential of a student meets the liberating art of a teacher, a miracle unfolds.”

-Mary Hatwood Futrell

“Teaching is the essential profession, the one that makes all professions possible.”

-David Haselkorn

“The work of a teacher — exhausting, complex, idiosyncratic, never twice the same — is at its heart an ethical enterprise. Teaching is the vocation of vocations.”

-William Ayres

“Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher.”

-Japanese Proverb

“Teachers, I believe, are the most responsible and important members of society because their professional efforts affect the fate of the earth.”

-Helen Caldicott

“If kids come to educators and teachers 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 Colorose

“Cheers to all of the teachers who give out pencils every single day who know that they’ll never get them back.”

-Unknown

“To me, the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching.”

-George Bernard Shaw

“A truly special teacher is very wise and sees tomorrow in every child’s eyes.”

-Unknown

“It takes a big heart to shape little minds.”

-Unknown

Encouraging Education Quotes

“Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.”

-William Butler Yeats

“The secret in education lies in respecting the student.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

“When educating the minds of our youth, we must not forget to educate their hearts.”

Dalai Lama

“Intelligence plus character– that is the goal of true education.”

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

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

-Gerald Belcher

“Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.”

-Malcolm X

“The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.”

-B.B. King

“Knock me down 9 times, but I get up 10.”

-Cardi B

encouraging

“Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best.”

-Bob Talbert

“Give me a fish, and I eat for a day. Teach me to fish, and I eat for a lifetime.”

-Chinese Proverb

“What a teacher writes on the blackboard of life can never be erased.”

-Unknown

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

-Simone Weil

“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.”

-Bell Hooks

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

-Malcolm Forbes

“Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace.”

-Confucius

“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

“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.”

-Emma Goldman

“No! Don’t think outside the box! Once you say that, you’ve established that there is a box.”

Walt Disney

encouraging

“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 plant and for the soul of the child.”

-Carl Jung

“The future of the world is in my classroom today, a future with the potential for good or bad… Several future presidents are learning from me today; so are the great writers of the next decades, and so are all the so-called ordinary people who will make the decisions in a democracy.”

-Ivan Welton Fitzwater

“Students don’t know how much you know until they know how much you care.”

-John C. Maxwell

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”

Benjamin Franklin

“The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”

-Aristotle

“I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.”

-Lily Tomlin

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

-Josef Albers

“The best teachers are those who show you where to look but don’t tell you what to see.”

-Alexandra K. Trenfor

“In learning, you will teach, and in teaching, you will learn.”

-Phil Collins

“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”

-Margaret Mead

“The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.”

-Sydney J. Harris

“Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.”

-GK Chesterton

Perfect Days to Pass Along These Educational Quotes

More Inspirational Quotes

Katee’s passion for writing and fascination for language has forever guided her path in life.

Keep up with Katee on Instagram and linkedin.com