Famous Quotes & Sayings

Henry Adams

Throughout human history the waste of mind has been appalling, and, as this story is meant to show, society has conspired to promote it. No doubt the teacher is the worst criminal, but the world stands behind him and drags the student from his course.

Henry Adams

No man can instruct more than half-a-dozen students at once. The whole problem of education is one of its cost in money.

Henry Adams

The study of history is useful to the historian by teaching him his ignorance of women.

Henry Adams

Teachers affect eternity; no one can tell where their influence stops.

Henry Adams

Teachers affect eternity. There is no telling where their influence stops.

Henry Adams

Nothing is more tiresome than a superannuated pedagogue.

Henry Adams

At the utmost, the active-minded young man should ask of his teacher only mastery of his tools. The young man himself, the subject of education, is a certain form of energy; the object to be gained is economy of his force; the training is partly the clearing away of obstacles, partly the direct application of effort. Once acquired, the tools and models may be thrown away.

Helen Hayes

The expert at anything was once a beginner.

Hazrat Inayat Khan

Those who have a desire to teach while coming to learn should not pose as disciples; they must come as teachers.

Hazrat Inayat Khan

The one Spirit of life is given different names, the sacred names. We more easily recognize the Spirit of life by the particular name to which we are accustomed. So far we are right, but the mistake we make, and it is to our loss, is to ignore or deny the same truth because it is given to us in another form and under another name. We limit it. We say the truth existed only in that period when certain teachers came to the world, and that after that it stopped.

Henry Giroux

Today, in the age of standardized testing, thinking and acting, reason and judgment have been thrown out the window just as teachers are increasingly being deskilled and forced to act as semi-robotic technicians good for little more than teaching for the test...

Hector Berlioz

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils. (Le temps est un grand maître, dit-on; le malheur est qu'il soit un maître inhumain qui tue ses élèves.)

Heber J. Grant

Teaching by precept, without example, is mighty poor teaching.

Heber J. Grant

I remember that after that teaching given to me as a young man, as a boy, almost, by the President of the Church. I read this chapter about once a week for quite a while, then once a month for several months. I thought I needed it in my business, so to speak; that it was one of the things that were necessary for my advancement.

Hedy Lamarr

I'm a sworn enemy of convention. I despite the conventional in anything, even the arts. I paint canvasses on the floor and drove one art teacher out of his mind. But that's just the way I paint best.

Henry David Thoreau

Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.

Mary Steenburgen

I studied with Sandy Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse. I was in the last class to study with him before he had his larynx removed, so I actually remember the sound of his voice. He was an incredible teacher.

Mary Wesley

Looking back, I understand that I was teaching myself to write.

Mary Ellen Chase

Of all the excellent teachers of college English whom I have known I have never discovered one who knew precisely what he was doing. Therein have lain their power and their charm.

Mary Elizabeth Ellis

Getting to play a yogic healer was awesome. I love yoga, so I've had a lot of teachers.

P. J. O'Rourke

Creative writing teachers should be purged until every last instructor who has uttered the words 'Write what you know' is confined to a labor camp. Please, talented scribblers, write what you don't. The blind guy with the funny little harp who composed The Iliad, how much combat do you think he saw?

Plato

Shall we not, then, lay down a law, in the first place, that boys shall abstain altogether from wine till their eighteenth year, thereby teaching that it is wrong to add fire to fire, as through a funnel, pouring it into their body and soul before they proceed to the labor of life, thus exercising a caution as to the maddening habits of youth.

Plato

[Not enough is known about solid geometry] and for two reasons: in the first place, no government places value on it; this leads to a lack of energy in the pursuit of it, and it is difficult. In the second place, students cannot learn it unless they have a teacher. But then a teacher can hardly be found....

Plato

I must yield to you, for you are irresistible.

Plato

Trees and fields tell me nothing: men are my teachers.

Plato

A nation will prosper to the degree that it honors it's teachers.

Plato

That's what education should be," I said, "the art of orientation. Educators should devise the simplest and most effective methods of turning minds around. It shouldn't be the art of implanting sight in the organ, but should proceed on the understanding that the organ already has the capacity, but is improperly aligned and isn't facing the right way.

Philip Wylie

One good teacher in a lifetime may sometimes change a delinquent into a solid citizen.

Philip Zimbardo

As a result of the prison study, I really became more aware of the central role of power in our lives. I became more aware of the power I have as a teacher. I started consciously doing things to minimize the negative use of power in the classroom. I encouraged students to challenge me.

Paulo Freire

To teach is part of the very fabric of learning.

Paulo Freire

I cannot be a teacher without exposing who I am.

Paulo Freire

... teaching cannot be a process of transference of knowledge from the one teaching to the learner. This is the mechanical transference from which results machinelike memorization, which I have already criticized. Critical study correlates with teaching that is equally critical, which necessarily demands a critical way of comprehending and of realizing the reading of the word and that of the world, the reading of text and of context.

Paulo Freire

This is the road I have tried to follow as a teacher: living my convictions; being open to the process of knowing and being sensitive to the experience of teaching as an art; being pushed forward by the challenges that prevent me from bureaucratizing my practice; accepting my limitations, yet always conscious of the necessary effort to overcome them and aware that I cannot hide them because to do so would be a failure to respect both my students and myself as a teacher.