Quotes & Sayings About Teaching

Koranic teaching still insists that the sun moves around the earth. How can we advance when they teach things like that? — Taslima Nasrin

The beginning of 1856 found me teaching in the family of a planter named Bryan, residing in Prince George County, Md., some fifteen or twenty miles from Washington. — Simon Newcomb

My reading is dead!' Pilar gasped. The little girl held the fourth grade reading book, rigid as a stillborn, across her open palms as if pleading with the pretty gringa teacher to take the burden away. — Janiece Hopper

Not long after the book came out I found myself being driven to a meeting
by a professor of electrical engineering in the graduate school I of MIT. He said that after reading the book he realized that his graduate students were using on him, and had used for the ten years and more he had been teaching there, all the evasive strategies I described in the book - mumble, guess-and-look, take a wild guess and see what happens, get the teacher to answer his own questions, etc.
But as I later realized, these are the games that all humans play when others
are sitting in judgment on them. — John Holt

Teaching was the hardest work I had ever done, and it remains the hardest work I have done to date. — Ann Richards

Teaching needs an ecosystem that supports evidence-based practice. It will need better systems to disseminate the results of research more widely, but also a better understanding of research, so that teachers can be critical consumers of evidence. — Ben Goldacre

In my view, all students should be given an initial opportunity to pursue the science track as far as it goes. But for those who quickly decide that track isn't for them, a different style of teaching is in order. — Philip Kitcher

Keep a close watch on yourself and on your teaching. Stay true to what is right. 1 TIMOTHY 4:16 NLT — Bethany House Publishers

She's French, so she's teaching them French, and their previous nanny was Spanish, so they're fluent in Spanish. — Gwyneth Paltrow

The work of meaningful student involvement is not easy or instantly rewarding. It demands that the system of schooling change, and that the attitudes of students, educators, parents and community members change. — Adam Fletcher

For a lot of people, well-meaning teaching has made poetry seem arcane, difficult, a kind of brown-knotting medicine that might be good for you but doesn't taste so good. So I tried to make a collection of poetry that would be fun. And that would bring out poetry as an art, rather than the challenge to say smart things. — Robert Pinsky

S. Neill put it, promising a reward for an activity is "tantamount to declaring that the activity is not worth doing for its own sake."26 Thus, a parent who says to a child, "If you finish your math homework, you may watch an hour of TV" is teaching the child to think of math as something that isn't much fun. — Alfie Kohn

The teacher's life is painfull and therefore would be pityed: it wrastles with unthankfulnesse above all measure ... Our calling creepes low and hath pain for companion. — Richard Mulcaster

Do not allow your daughters to be taught letters by a man, though he be a St. Paul or St. Francis of Assissium. The saints are in Heaven. — Alphonsus Liguori

I just had to plod along without having any teaching, which was a pity. — Ida Rentoul Outhwaite

The very best thing you can be in life is a teacher, provided you are crazy in love with what you teach, and that your classes consist of eighteen students or fewer. Classes of eighteen students or fewer are a family, and feel and act like one. — Kurt Vonnegut

But one of the things I have learned during the time I have spent in the United States is an old African American saying: Each one, teach one. I want to believe that I am here to teach one and, more, that there is one here who is meant to teach me. And if we each one teach one, we will make a difference. — Marcus Samuelsson

Teaching at best beckons us to morality, but it is not in itself efficacious. Teaching is like a mirror. It can show you if your face is dirty, but it the mirror will not wash your face. — Ravi Zacharias

The Great Commission is a devotion to study of Scriptures, preaching and teaching of the gospel of salvation. — Lailah Gifty Akita

We need to teach people that the environment has a direct bearing on our own benefit. — Dalai Lama

Instead of standing on a stage each day, dispensing knowledge to my young charges, I should guide them as they approach their own understandings. — Donalyn Miller

The petty worries of the
school room must not be carried to your home or boarding place. — Thomas E. Sanders

I had wanted for so many years to feel that writing really was at the center of my life, not something I did in my spare time. So the writing and teaching feel in some way to be one thing - the personal engagement and the social engagement good partners. — Alison Hawthorne Deming

The only teaching that a professor can give, in my opinion, is that of thinking in front of his students. — Henri Lebesgue

Some form of suffering often brings about a readiness. One can say it cracks open the shell of the egoic mind with which many people identify as "me." Life cracks open that shell, and once that crack is there, then we are reached more easily by spiritual teaching. — Eckhart Tolle

Acting is something I love. It's a great craft that I have a lot of respect for. But I don't think it's any greater challenge than teaching 8-year-olds or any other career. In my life, I try not to make it more important than it is and I just hope that rubs off on the people around me. — Hugh Jackman

Policy makers and politicians want more STEM; educators want more STEAM. Both, in ways that are eerily similar, are engaging in social engineering to support an ideology. At the macro-level, in both worlds, it's all about teaching a point of view, rather than teaching students to learn. We seem hell bent on an arbitrarily linear approach to engineering a "useful" or job-securing education, from which we continue to get mixed results. — Henry Doss

Yale places great stress on undergraduate and graduate teaching. I like teaching, and I do a lot of it. — James Tobin

Are our ways of teaching students to ask some questions always correlative with our ways of teaching them not to ask - indeed, to be unconscious of - others? Does the educational system exist in order to promulgate knowledge, or is its main function rather to universalize a society's tacit agreement about what it has decided it does not and cannot know? — Barbara Johnson

It may well be easier to remember a list if one sings it (or dances to it). However, these uses of the 'materials' of an intelligence are essentially trivial. What is not trivial is the capacity to think musically. — Howard Gardner

Lao Tsu doesn't seem to hold to much stock for words or phrases or teachings. — Frederick Lenz

Zen was an attempt to get back to the purest teachings of the Buddha -enlightenment without strings. — Frederick Lenz

If a pickpocket meets a saint, he sees only his pockets." Then he'd get up and leave. Or he'd write, "If you wear shoeleather, the whole earth is covered with leather." These were his ways of teaching me about how motivation affects perception. — Ram Dass

My weakness for sympathizing with others has much to do with my status as a bastard, which is not to say that being a bastard naturally predisposes one to sympathy. Many bastards behave like bastards, and I credit my gentle mother with teaching me the idea that blurring the lines between us and them can be a worthy behavior. — Viet Thanh Nguyen

We must trust that what we're doing has a purpose. We must realize that we're not here to make kids conform or perform, but that we're here to help them to develop their own unique skills and talents, not the ones we want them to have or the ones we think they should have. — Tom Walsh

If teaching is largely about faculty-student interaction, then we have to recognize that human interaction is changing. — Jose Antonio Bowen

Princeton has made an enormous difference in my life, and I am delighted to be able to express my gratitude in such a tangible way. The generosity of earlier generations of donors made it possible for me to attend Princeton as a young student from Hong Kong, and I have always wanted to do all I could to assure that students in the future.. from the United States and around the world.. will have the same kinds of opportunities I had to learn from faculty members who are leaders in their fields at a university that remains second to none in its commitment to teaching. — Gordon Wu

The longer we are members of the Church, the better we understand the gospel, the more we will be inclined to be peacefully minded. The more diligently we follow the teaching of Christ, the slower we will be to be angry with each other and the quicker we will be to forgive each other. — Theodore M. Burton

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

No matter what the practice or teaching, ego loves to wait in ambush to appropriate spirituality for its own survival and gain. — Chogyam Trungpa

Jesus' teaching in general [implies] that happy and fulfilling sexual relations in marriage depend on each partner aiming to give satisfaction to the other. If it is the joy of each to make the other happy, a hundred problems will be solved before they happen. — John Piper

Winning and losing aren't all they're cracked up to be, but the trip to the destination is. — John Wooden

Liberation from ego is what we shramanas are seeking, O Exalted One. If I were your disciple, O Venerable One, I'm afraid it might befall me that my ego would be pacified and liberated only seemingly, only illusorily, that in reality it would survive and grow great, for then I would make the teaching, my discipleship, my love for you, and the community of the monks into my ego! — Hermann Hesse

If men act upon the teaching of the Word of God, and as proportionately men live according to the teaching and commands of the Bible, so they have in practice a sufficient psychological base. I will find you a man dealing with psychological problems on the basis of the teaching of the Word of God, even if he never heard the word psychology, or does not know what it means. — Francis Schaeffer

The best teachers are the best storytellers. — Frank Smith

I tried to comfort him. I tried to tell him it might be chance, not destiny, that has put him here. Do you know what he said?"
"That there is no chance, only destiny."
Her hands paused. "How did you know?"
"It is one of the cornerstones of Sa's teachings. That destiny is not reserved for a few chosen ones. Each man has a destiny. Recognizing it and fulfilling it are the purpose of a man's life."
"It seems a burdensome teaching to me."
Kennit shook his head against the pillow. "If a man can believe it, then he can know he is as important as any other man. He can also know that he is no more important than any other is. It creates a vast equality of purpose."
p. 530: Etta to Kennit — Robin Hobb

Rather than literally burning the midnight oil, which he judged to be unhealthy, John Adams advised his son to make the most of college by developing an inquisitive outlook that would prompt him to get to know the most exceptional scholars and question them closely. Ask them about their tutors, manner of teaching. Observe what books lie on their tables. Fall into questions of literature, science, or what you will. — David McCullough

We think we have to prove our allegiance to God by being poor. Many years ago, my own psychic development teacher taught me that to be on a spiritual path meant that you needed to be poor, because that was proving your allegiance to God. So growing up with that kind of teaching from her was a real struggle for me, also. — Echo Bodine

I had the vision of creating my own camp to make sure I was teaching the campers what I wanted. Plus I picked other players that were good on the field and off so we could be great role models for these girls to look up to. I hope to inspire others and encourage them to go after their dreams. — Jennie Finch

Dehaene even allows himself a few moments of (justifiable) annoyance at the way that "childhood reading experts" continue their debates about the best strategies for teaching reading to children in complete ignorance of a large and growing body of work on how the human brain processes written language. — Alan Jacobs

In schools the main problem is not the absence of innovations but the presence of too many disconnected ... piecemeal, superficially adorned projects ... We are over our heads. — Michael Fullan

Any school for free citizens must begin by teaching distrust, not trust. It must teach questioning, not acceptance of stock answers. — Brian Herbert

I talk to groups studying the most advanced spiritual teachings and sometimes these people wonder why nothing is happening in their lives. Their motive is the attainment of inner peace for themselves - which of course is a selfish motive. You will not find it with this motive. The motive, if you are to find inner peace, must be an outgoing motive. Service, of course, service. Giving, not getting. Your motive must be good if your work is to have good effect. The secret of life is being of service. — Peace Pilgrim

Grub Street Writers is the reason I've stayed in Boston. I started teaching for Grub back in 1997, when founder Eve Bridburg, a Boston University M.A. alumna, as I am, kindly gave me my first job out of grad school. — Jenna Blum

Every real teacher is myself in disguise. — Richard Bach

In Buddhist teaching, ignorance is considered the fundamental cause of violence - ignorance ... about the separation of self and other ... about the consequences of our actions. — Sharon Salzberg

THE PATH IS exceedingly vast. From ancient times to the present day, even the greatest sages were unable to perceive and comprehend the entire truth; the explanation and teachings of masters and saints express only part of the whole. It is not possible for anyone to speak of such things in their entirety. Just head for the light and heat, learn from the gods, and through the virtue of devoted practice of the Art of Peace, become one with the divine. — Morihei Ueshiba

I mean really wonderful. In teaching. Personal epiphanies. About life. About different perspectives-help with different perspectives that you have. You know what I mean? Relationships to nature. Relationships with the self. With other people. With events. — Keanu Reeves

I loathe it when they [English teachers] are bullied by no-nothing parents or cowardly school boards. — Pat Conroy

So many teachers teach us but we shall always remember certain teachers — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

I think I've become more like my mom just because of what we're both interested in, children and teaching and writing. — Jenna Bush

I collect axioms, paradoxes, maxims, teaching stories, proverbs, and aphorisms of all sorts, because I love to see complex ideas distilled into a few words. — Gretchen Rubin

Have faith that your child's brain is an evolving planet that rotates at its own speed. It will naturally be attracted to or repel certain subjects. — Suzy Kassem

We cannot, therefore, blame the courts, public schools, media, or government for our own theological unfaithfulness. We are the ones - the prophets and priests - who have contributed to this "Ichabod," this departure of God's glory in our time. Only by returning to sound, effective God-centered preaching and teaching can we restore the confidence not only of Christians themselves in God's greatness, but of an unbelieving world that is more apathetic toward our benign, helpless, happy deity than hostile. — Michael S. Horton

[T]he young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands. — William Faulkner

Good teaching is creating really interesting generalizations out of war stories. — Derek Bok

Teaching is a wonderful way to learn. — Carol S. Dweck

As long as you know 'to let' means to rent and not a place to pee, you're all set to travel in the UK. The lifts and the boots and everything else don't really matter. — Tucker Elliot

It would be unjust toward children to introduce them to Christian teaching and existence only as little pagans and catechumens, in order to leave it up to them to choose the Faith on their own responsibility at a point in time difficult to determine. — Hans Urs Von Balthasar

[About describing atomic models in the language of classical physics:]
We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections. — Niels Bohr

[The error in the teaching of mathematics is that] mathematics is expected either to be immediately attractive to students on its own merits or to be accepted by students solely on the basis of the teacher's assurance that it will be helpful in later life. [And yet,] mathematlcs is the key to understanding and mastering our physical, social and biological worlds. — Morris Kline

I do not need any writing, since I transmit teaching beyond words and ideas. — Bodhidharma

Did one learn or was one shaped? — Paul Russell

One of the advantages of having gone to Penn State was having had a scholar for a mentor - Philip Young. Also, a professional writer named Philip Klass taught there. He was a science fiction writer whose pseudonym was William Tenn. As a professional writer, he brought wisdom to teaching because he'd done it for a living. — David Morrell

I said, "I'm satisfied teaching the martial arts."
"Not me," Arnold responded. "Bodybuilding is just a stepping-stone to me. I plan on becoming a real estate mogul, and from there, I plan to get into the movies."
I had to smile as I said to myself, "How's he going to be an actor when he can hardly speak English? — Chuck Norris

The teachings of the Bible are so interwoven and entwined with our whole civic and social life that it would be literally impossible for us to figure to ourselves what that life would be if these teaching were removed. — Theodore Roosevelt

With too much pride a man cannot learn a thing. In and of itself, learning teaches you how foolish you are. — Criss Jami

When I came home after my statutory term as surgeon general, I just resumed my life here in southern Arizona. Teaching at the university; my law enforcement career. Sitting on some boards. All the things I did before. — Richard Carmona

As another has well said, to handicap a student by teaching him that his black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching. — Carter G. Woodson

But the important thing is that I don't do anything else. I avoid social life normally associated with publishing. I don't go to the cocktail parties, I don't give or go to dinner parties. I need that time in the evening because I can do a tremendous amount of work then. And I can concentrate. When I sit down to write I never brood. I have so many other things to do, with my children and teaching, that I can't afford it ... — Toni Morrison

During that summer Nekhludoff experienced that exaltation which youth comes to know not by the teaching of others, but when it naturally begins to recognize the beauty and importance of life, and man's serious place in it; when it sees the possibility of infinite perfection of which the world is capable, and devotes itself to that endeavor, not only with the hope, but with a full conviction of reaching that perfection which it imagines possible. — Leo Tolstoy

The institution of teachership is there for this reason, that the learner must learn how to learn. — Idries Shah

When I have a difficult subject before me - when I find the road narrow, and can see no other way of teaching a well established truth except by pleasing one intelligent man and displeasing ten thousand fools - I prefer to address myself to the one man, and to take no notice whatever of the condemnation of the multitude; I prefer to extricate that intelligent man from his embarrassment and show him the cause of his perplexity, so that he may attain perfection and be at peace. — Maimonides

Aboriginal Okinawan Karate was traditionally taught in modest home Dojos, in small informal groups (sole purpose of teachings revolved around life preservation), in A closely tied supportive environment; unlike main island modern Japanese version with rivalry and competition, instructed in large groups belonging to even larger organizations with pseudo-militaristic hierarchy — Soke Behzad Ahmadi

It was while teaching philosophy that I saw how easily one can say ... what one wants to say ... In fact, I became particularly aware if the dangers of speculation ... It's so much easier than digging out the facts. You sit in your office and build a system. But with my training in biology, I felt this kind of undertaking precarious. — Jean Piaget

Too many believe that love is a condition, a feeling that involves 100 percent of the heart, something that happens to you. They disassociate love from the mind and, therefore, from agency. In commanding us to love, the Lord refers to something much deeper than romance - a love that is the most profound form of loyalty. He is teaching us that love is something more than feelings of the heart; it is also a covenant we keep with soul and mind. — Lynn G. Robbins

To fit the individual to live and to function in the institutional life of his day. — Max Braithwaite

Who sings of all of Love's eternity
Who shines so bright
In all the songs of Love's unending spells?
Holy lightning strikes all that's evil
Teaching us to love for goodness sake.
Hear the music of Love Eternal
Teaching us to reach for goodness sake. — Jon Anderson

A warning is in order. Reject any teaching that even suggests material wealth, physical health, or favorable circumstances have anything to do with the amount of faith you have or how pleased God happens to be with you. And beware those who teach that financial donations will unlock an endless abundance of God's blessings. They are false shepherds who will rob you of your money and destroy your relationship with God. The "faith" they proclaim is a toxic faith. — Charles R. Swindoll

(on teaching writing)
So many writers come to class with one question dominant in their mind, 'How do I make a living from this?' It's a fair enough question and one I always try to answer well - but it saddens me that it so often overshadows the more relevant questions of 'why am I writing' and 'what am I saying' and 'how do I keep it honest. — Celine Kiernan

Those periods of struggling to overcome challenges are what people find to be the most enjoyable times. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Even Satan can quote scripture out of context why are we surprised when men do it. — Gary Rohrmayer

I was trained to become an economist and I finished my work and I was teaching and did my PhD so I thought I did that. I prepared myself for that kind of road. But then I realized that I had not learned enough to solve the problem of poverty. So I distanced myself from the things that I learned and tried to learn anew about people. — Muhammad Yunus

None can teach admirably if not loving his task. — Amos Bronson Alcott

Teaching English and teaching Writing are two separate things. — Vanna Bonta

Teaching prejudice to a child is itself a form of bullying. You've got to be taught to hate. — Roger Ebert

If we spark a student's passion, we unleash a powerful force upon the world. — Tim Fargo

I get tips from Bob Gaudio. And one of my songs somehow caught the attention of one of my idols, Marty Panzer, who wrote big hits for Barry Manilow. So two guys who inspired me to write lyrics are now teaching me to write. — Erich Bergen

It's very rare to see an undisturbed birth in a modern U.S. teaching hospital, but when you see a woman who isn't frightened, who's giving birth without interference, you stand back in awe and realize how little needed you are except in the rare circumstance. — Ina May Gaskin

No teaching that is not based on reason can be tolerated by critical minds, but the belief that an accident of blind force produces this highly organized world is far more fantastic than the theory that a Super Intelligence devised its ordered evolution. — Alice Hegan Rice