A - F quotes

View Quote One-time member of the school, come here to me, and let me explain to you what my teacher revealed.Like you, I was once a youth and had a mentor. The teacher assigned a task to me -- it was man's work. Like a springing reed, I leapt up and put myself to work. I did not depart from my teacher's instructions, and I did not start doing things on my own initiative. My mentor was delighted with my work on the assignment. He rejoiced that I was humble before him and he spoke in my favour.I just did whatever he outlined for me -- everything was always in its place. Only a fool would have deviated from his instructions. He guided my hand on the clay and kept me on the right path. He made me eloquent with words and gave me advice. He focused my eyes on the rules which guide a man with a task: zeal is proper for a task, time-wasting is taboo; anyone who wastes time on his task is neglecting his task.He did not vaunt his knowledge: his words were modest. If he had vaunted his knowledge, people would have frowned. Do not waste time, do not rest at night -- get on with that work! Do not reject the pleasurable company of a mentor or his assistant: once you have come into contact with such great brains, you will make your own words more worthy. [...] There, I have recited to you what my teacher revealed, and you will not neglect it. You should pay attention -- taking it to heart will be to your benefit!

View Quote A supervisor to his learned scribe, The advice of a supervisor to a younger scribe (Eduba C), Sumerian disputation by an anonymous author, late third or early second millennium BCE, at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature.

View Quote Raise your head now, you who were formerly a youth. You can turn your hand against any man, so act as is befitting. [...] Through you who offered prayers and so blessed me, who instilled instruction into my body as if I were consuming milk and butter, who showed his service to have been unceasing, I have experienced success and suffered no evil. The teachers, those learned men, should value you highly. [...] Your name will be hailed as honourable for its prominence. For your sweet songs even the cowherds will strive gloriously. For your sweet songs I too shall strive. [...] The teacher will bless you with a joyous heart. You who as a youth sat at my words have pleased my heart. Nisaba has placed in your hand the honour of being a teacher. For her, the fate determined for you will be changed and so you will be generously blessed. May she bless you with a joyous heart and free you from all despondency. [...] For your sweet songs even the cowherds will strive gloriously. For your sweet songs I too shall strive. [...] They should recognise that you are a practitioner of wisdom. The little fellows should enjoy like beer the sweetness of decorous words: experts bring light to dark places, they bring it to culs-de-sac and streets.

View Quote A supervisor to his learned scribe, The advice of a supervisor to a younger scribe (Eduba C) by an anonymous author, late third or early second millennium BCE, at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature.

View Quote My school was a happy place. All of us who started our schooling there completed our studies till the eighth standard. I don't remember even a single person dropping out. These days, when i visit schools, both big and small, all across the country, i tell them that true quality does not come from a great building or great facilities or great advertisements. It happens when education is imparted with love by great teachers.

View Quote APJ Abdul Kalam, My Journey: Transforming Dreams into Actions, Rupa Publications, 2014.

View Quote Rarely will you meet anyone so jealous as a teacher. Year after year students tumble along like the waters of a river. They flow away, and only the teacher is left behind, like some deeply buried rock at the bottom of the current. Although he may tell others of his hopes, he doesn't dream of them himself. He thinks of himself as worthless and either falls into masochistic loneliness or, failing that, ultimately becomes suspicious and pious, forever denouncing the eccentricities of others. He longs so much for freedom and action that he can only hate people.

View Quote Kobo Abe, The Woman in the Dunes, Part 2, Ch. 11

View Quote A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

View Quote Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, Ch. 20, "Failure".

View Quote Philosophy teachers are teachers, i.e. intellectuals employed in a given education system and subject to that system, performing, as a mass, the social function of inculcating the 'values of the ruling ideology'. The fact that there may be a certain amount of 'play' in schools and other institutions which enables individual teachers to turn their teaching and reflection against these established 'values' does not change the mass effect of the philosophical teaching function. Philosophers are intellectuals and therefore petty bourgeois, subject as a mass to bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideology.

View Quote Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Writings (1971), p. 42.

View Quote O ye! who teach the ingenious youth of nations, Holland, France, England, Germany or Spain,I pray ye flog them upon all occasions, It mends their morals, never mind the pain.

View Quote Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto II, Stanza 1.

View Quote 'Tis pleasing to be school'd in a strange tongue By female lips and eyes—that is, I mean,When both the teacher and the taught are young, As was the case, at least, where I have been;They smile so when one's right; and when one's wrong They smile still more.

View Quote Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto II, Stanza 164.

View Quote You seemed to be listening to me, not to find out useful information, but to try to catch me in a logical fallacy. This tells us all that you are used to being smarter than your teachers, and that you listen to them in order to catch them making mistakes and prove how smart you are to the other students. This is such a pointless, stupid way of listening to teachers that it is clear you are going to waste months of our time before you finally catch on that the only transaction that matters is a transfer of useful information from adults who possess it to children who do not, and that catching mistakes is a criminal misuse of time.

View Quote Orson Scott Card Ender's Shadow

View Quote Nothing is so apt to draw men under teaching, as to love, and be loved.

View Quote St. John Chrysostom, Homily 6 on First Timothy

View Quote I developed The Great Teacher theory late in my freshman year. It was a cornerstone of the theory that great teachers had great personalities and that the greatest teachers had outrageous personalities. I did not like decorum or rectitude in a classroom; I preferred a highly oxygenated atmosphere, a climate of intemperance, rhetoric, and feverish melodrama. And I wanted my teachers to make me smart. A great teacher is my adversary, my conqueror, commissioned to chastise me. He leaves me tame and grateful for the new language he has purloined from other kings whose granaries are filled and whose libraries are famous. He tells me that teaching is the art of theft; knowing what to steal and from whom. Bad teachers do not touch me; the great ones never leave me. They ride with me during all my days, and I pass on to others what they have imparted to me. I exchange their handy gifts with strangers on trains, and I pretend the gifts are mine. I steal from the great teachers. And the truly wonderful thing about them is that they would applaud my theft, laugh at the thought of it, realizing that they had taught me their larcenous skills well.

View Quote Pat Conroy, The Lords of Discipline (1980), p. 271

View Quote [A good teacher] brings knowledge and his pupil into a vital relationship; and the object of teaching is to establish that relationship on an intelligible basis. This can only be done ... by appealing to two qualities which are at the bottom of all knowledge, curiosity and observation. They are born with us, every child naturally develops them, and it is the duty of the teacher to direct them to proper ends.

View Quote Mandell Creighton, Thoughts on Education: Speeches and Sermons (1902)

View Quote Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.

View Quote John Cotton Dana. In 1912 Dana, a Newark, New Jersey, librarian, was asked to supply a Latin quotation suitable for inscription on a new building at Newark State College (now Kean College of New Jersey), Union, New Jersey. Unable to find an appropriate quotation, Dana composed what became the college motto. The New York Times Book Review, March 5, 1967, p. 55.

View Quote It turns out that teaching is one of those things like raising a kid or working out—sometimes amazing, often difficult and painful, but, in hindsight, amazing.

View Quote Cory Doctorow, The Man Who Sold the Moon in Ed Finn & Kathryn Cramer (eds.) Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future (2014), ISBN 978-0-06-220469-1, p. 129

View Quote To be a schoolmaster is next to being a king. Do you reckon it a mean employment to imbue the minds of your fellow-citizens in their earliest years with the best Letters and with the love of Christ, and to return them to their country honest and virtuous men? In the opinion of fools it is a humble task, but in fact it is the noblest of occupations.

View Quote Erasmus, Letter to Joanes Sapidus (c. 1581), The Epistles of Erasmus (1904), p. 235

View Quote Such an office demands an upright and incorruptible man, who would take delight in his pious work even without any pay, while a high salary and a position of dignity would attract the meanest characters.

View Quote Erasmus, Letter to Joanes Sapidus (c. 1581), The Epistles of Erasmus (1904), p. 236

View Quote D'ordinaire, ceux qui gouvernent les enfants ne leur pardonnent rien, et se pardonnent tout à eux-mêmes.

View Quote In general, those who govern children forgive nothing in them, but everything in themselves.

View Quote François Fénelon Traité de l'éducation des filles, ch. 5, cited from De l'éducation des filles, dialogues des morts et opuscules divers (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1857) p. 15; translation from Selections from the Writings of Fénelon (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, Little and Wilkins, 1829) p. 137. (1687).

View Quote The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards; and curiosity itself can be vivid and wholesome only in proportion as the mind is contented and happy.

View Quote Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (vol. 1 of The Works of Anatole France), trans. Lafcadio Hearn, part 2, chapter 4, June 6, 1860, p. 198 (1924).