Teacher Appreciation Quotes

These are some teacher appreciation quotes, quotations on teaching and related matters. Many of them can be useful to you when writing a letter of appreciation to your teacher. Others are just worth reading and thinking about.




“It should be recognised that the proper status of teachers and due public regard for the profession of teaching are of major importance.”
UNESCO (Art. 5 of 1996 Recommendation)

“Modern cynics and skeptics see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing.”
John F. Kennedy

“Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource.”
John F. Kennedy

“Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation.”
John F. Kennedy

“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

“A true disciple shows his appreciation by reaching further than his teacher.”
Aristotle

“Education is the best provision for the journey to old age.”
Aristotle

“Bitter are the roots of study, but how sweet their fruit.”
Cato

“Teach the children so that it willnot be necessary to teach the adults.”
Abraham Lincoln

“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. That everyone may receive at least a moderate education appears to be an objective of vital importance.”
Abraham Lincoln

“Genius without education is like silver in the mine.”
Benjamin Franklin

“The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.”
Plato

“The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education.”
Plutarch

“I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well”
Alexander the Great

“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”
Henry Adams

“Teacher appreciation makes the world of education go around.”
Helen Peters

“What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches.”
Soren Kierkegaard

“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”
Andy McIntyre

“The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives.”
Robert M. Hutchins

“He who opens a school door, closes a prison.”
Victor Hugo

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

“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”
H.G. Wells

“Without teacher appreciation there can’t be any student progress.”
Theresa Grimm

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

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

“Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre.”
Gail Godwin

“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 the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.”
Carl Jung

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

“Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.”
James A. Garfield

“The highest result of education is tolerance.”
Helen Keller

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

“In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day's work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years.”
Jacques Barzun

“Teachers appreciate being appreciated, for teacher appreciation is their highest award.”
William Prince

“I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.”
Wilson Mizner

“A master can tell you what he expects of you. A teacher, though awakens your own expectations.”
Patricia Neal

“The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.”
Mark van Doren

“The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called truth.”
Dan Rather

“Teachers are expected to reach unattainable goals with inadequate tools. The miracle is that at times they accomplish this impossible task.”
Haim Ginott

“None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody (a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns) bent down and helped us pick up our boots.”
Thurgood Marshall

“The good teacher makes the poor student good and the good student superior.”
Marva Collins

“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.”
Patricia Cross

“To teach is to learn twice.”
Joseph Joubert

“Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.”
John C. Dana

“The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-distrust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciple.”
Amos Alcott

“When you teach your son, you teach your son's son.”
The Talmud

“Good teachers are costly, but bad teachers cost more.”
Bob Talbert

“A good teacher is a master of simplification and an enemy of simplism.”
Louis Berman

“If a doctor, lawyer, or dentist had 40 people in his office at one time, all of whom had different needs, and some of whom didn't want to be there and were causing trouble, and the doctor, lawyer, or dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all with professional excellence for nine months, then he might have some conception of the classroom teacher's job.”
Donald Quinn

“Public education rests precariously on the skill and virtue of the people at the bottom of the institutional pyramid.”
Tracy Kidder

“If students don’t feel teacher appreciation, their whole education has failed.”
Michael Balkers

“Education is what most receive, many pass on, and few possess.”
Karl Kraus

“A good teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.”
Thomas Carruthers

“Teachers open the door. You enter by yourself.”
Chinese proverb

“There are three good reasons to be a teacher: June, July, and August.”
Anonymous

”Often, when I am reading a good book, I stop and thank my teacher.”
Anonymous

“The best teachers teach from the heart, not from the book.”
Anonymous

“Teaching is the profession that teaches all the other professions.”
Anonymous

“A good teacher is like a candle: it consumes itself to light the way for others.”
Anonymous

“A teacher's purpose is not to create students in his own image, but to develop students who can create their own image.”
Anonymous

“Teaching should be full of ideas instead of stuffed with facts.”
Anonymous
"By viewing the old we learn the new"
Chinese Proverb

"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

"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

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

"To teach is to learn twice."
Joseph Joubert

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

"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

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

"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

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

"I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework. "
Lily Tomlin as "Edith Ann"

"The best teachers teach from the heart, not from the book. "
Author Unknown

"He who opens a school door, closes a prison. "
Victor Hugo

"What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches. "
Karl Menninger

"If a doctor, lawyer, or dentist had 40 people in his office at one time, all of whom had different needs, and some of whom didn't want to be there and were causing trouble, and the doctor, lawyer, or dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all with professional excellence for nine months, then he might have some conception of the classroom teacher's job. "
Donald D. Quinn

"None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody - a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns - bent down and helped us pick up our boots. "
Thurgood Marshall

"There are three good reasons to be a teacher - June, July, and August. "
Author Unknown

"Often, when I am reading a good book, I stop and thank my teacher. That is, I used to, until she got an unlisted number. "
Author Unknown

"Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre."
Gail Godwin

"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 the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child."
Carl Jung

"A good teacher is a good student first. By repeating his lessons, he acquires excellence."
M. K. Soni

"My coach is like a teacher, my former manager was like a drill sergeant."
Goodbye Manager, Hello Coach

"I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework."
Lily Tomlin

"None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody - a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns - bent down and helped us pick up our boots."
Thurgood Marshall

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

"Teaching is the greatest act of optimism."
Colleen Wilcox

"A professor can never better distinguish himself in his work than by encouraging a clever pupil, for the true discoverers are among them, as comets amongst the stars."
Carl Von Linne

"The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery."
Mark van Doren

"He who opens a school door, closes a prison."
Victor Hugo

"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