Selected teaching quotes

1. Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality.

2. The best book on programming for the layman is 'Alice in Wonderland'; but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.

3. You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.

4. A Socrates in every classroom.

5. All I did was sit on the riverbank handing out river water. After I'm gone, I trust you will notice the river.

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

7. An instructor should exemplify the things he seeks to teach. It will be of great advantage if you yourself can do all you ask of your students and more.

8. I am not teaching you anything. I just help you to explore yourself.

9. The people of your world became so stupid and rude that my companions and I no longer enjoyed teaching them. You must surely have heard of us: we were called oracles, nymphs, spirits, fairies, household gods, lemures, larvas, lamias, sprites, water-nymphs, incubi, shades, spirits of the dead, specters and ghosts.

10. It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn.

11. The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.

12. He who has failed three times sets up as an instructor.

13. The music teacher came twice a week to bridge the awful gap between Dorothy and Chopin.

14. He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

15. The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.

16. I thought it would be lovely to use [pet bulldog] Noelle as an example to teach the importance of being who you are. For me it's important to inspire children in a positive way, and at times they understand more messages through entertainment than when one is talking to them directly.

17. Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.

18. The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a student how to learn it.

19. The ideal college is Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other.

20. I have come to believe ... that the stage may do more than teach, that much of our current moral instruction will not endure the test of being cast into a lifelike mold, and when presented in dramatic form will reveal itself as platitudinous and effete. That which may have sounded like righteous teaching when it was remote and wordy, will be challenged afresh when it is obliged to simulate life itself.

21. Since I was 18 years old, I have taught the Bible. For the last fifteen or twenty years, I have taught every Sunday when I was home or near my own house, so that would be 35 or 40 times per year. Half of those Sundays, the text comes from the Hebrew Bible. I have had a deep personal interest in the Holy Land and in the teachings of the Hebrew people. God has a special position for the Jewish people, the Hebrews, or whatever. I know the difference between ancient Israel and Judaea, and I know the history. I don't have any problem with the Jewish people.

22. Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality. I have been for many years a teacher of languages. It is an occupation which at length becomes fatal to whatever share of imagination, observation, and insight an ordinary person may be heir to. To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.

23. To teach is to learn twice.

24. If I don't have wisdom, I can teach you only ignorance.

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

26. Man's most human characteristic is not his ability to learn, which he shares with many other species, but his ability to teach and store what others have developed and taught him.

27. It's really important for me to get across to our fans that whenever I put myself in different circumstances. It is to learn from it so I can relay it to others.

28. The Socratic manner is not a game at which two can play.

29. Example is always more efficacious than precept.

30. I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.

31. Our school systems teach our children that they are nothing but glorified apes who have evolutionized out of some primordial soup of mud, by teaching evolution as fact.

32. Teachers who offer you the ultimate answers do not possess the ultimate answers, for if they did, they would know that the ultimate answers cannot be given, they can only be received.

33. A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.

34. The teachers are everywhere. What is wanted is a learner.

35. A teacher's major contribution may pop out anonymously in the life of some ex-student's grandchild. A teacher, finally, has nothing to go on but faith, a student nothing to offer in return but testimony.

36. Only the stupid and the phlegmatic should teach.

37. Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

38. Housework is a breeze. Cooking is a pleasant diversion. Putting up a retaining wall is a lark. But teaching is like climbing a mountain.

39. The great moral teachers of humanity were, in a way, artistic geniuses in the art of living.

40. You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.

41. A zealous disciple expressed a desire to teach others the Truth and asked the Master what he thought about this. The Master said, 'Wait.' Each year the disciple would return with the same request and each time the Master would give him the same reply: 'Wait.' One day he said to the Master, 'When will I be ready to teach?' Said the Master, 'When your excessive eagerness to teach has left you.'

42. The world of knowledge takes a crazy turn When teachers themselves are taught to learn.

43. 'A teacher is never too smart to learn from his pupils. But while runners differ, basic principles never change. So it's a matter of fitting your current practices to fit the event and the individual. See, what's good for you might not be worth a darn for the next guy.'

44. The lips of the righteous teach many, But fools die for want of wisdom.

45. In all the works on pedagogy that ever I read - and they have been many, big, and heavy - I don't remember that any one has advocated a system of teaching by practical jokes, mostly cruel. That, however, describes the method of our great teacher, Experience.

46. Teaching people to draw is teaching people to look.

47. I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

48. A schoolteacher or professor cannot educate individuals, he educates only species.

49. At the end of about a week, I called back and said, 'I need something to compare this to. Could I please have a microsecond?'

50. There are people who barely feel poetry, and they are generally dedicated to teaching it.

51. I consider western Christianity in its practical working a negation of Christ's Christianity.

52. The ability to learn is older- as it is also more widespread- than is the ability to teach.

53. Humor must not professedly teach, and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

54. Most problems of teaching are not problems of growth but helping cultivate growth. As far as I know, and this is only from personal experience in teaching, I think about ninety percent of the problem in teaching, or maybe ninety-eight percent, is just to help the students get interested. Or what it usually amounts to is to not prevent them from being interested. Typically they come in interested, and the process of education is a way of driving that defect out of their minds. But if children['s] [...] normal interest is maintained or even aroused, they can do all kinds of things in ways we don't understand.

55. Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong; They learn in suffering what they teach in song.

56. I intend no Monopoly, but a Community in Learning; I study not for my own sake only, but for theirs that study not for themselves.

57. 'Educational' refers to the process, not the object. Although, come to think of it, some of my teachers could easily have been replaced by a cheeseburger.

58. Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It's the only thing.

59. Concerning the power of story, William Dych, S.J. writes in his introduction to selected writings of Anthony De Mello, 'A master was once unmoved by the complaints of his disciples that, though they listened with pleasure to his parables and stories, they were also frustrated for they longed for something deeper. To all their objections he would simply reply: 'You have yet to understand, my friends, that the shortest distance between a human being and truth is a story.''

60. I have always loved truth so passionately that I have often resorted to lying as a way of first introducing it into minds which were ignorant of its charms.

61. I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated, a child humanized or de-humanized.

62. What office is there which involves more responsibility, which requires more qualifications, and which ought, therefore, to be more honourable, than that of teaching?

63. 'A good sermon is an engineering operation by which a chasm is bridged so that the spiritual goods on one side- the 'unsearchable riches of Christ' -are actually transported into personal lives upon the other.'

64. As a teacher, as a propagandist, Shaw is no good at all, even in his own generation. But as a personality, he is immortal.

65. I associated much of Christian doctrine with children's stories because I grew up in church. My Sunday school teachers had turned Bible narrative into children's fables. They talked about Noah and the ark because the story had animals in it. They failed to mention that this was when God massacred all of humanity.

66. Tell all the Truth but tell it slant - Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth's superb surprise As Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind -

67. 'I wish to become a teacher of the Truth.' 'Are you prepared to be ridiculed, ignored and starving till you are forty-five?' 'I am. But tell me: What will happen after I am forty-five?' 'You will have grown accustomed to it.'

68. Teach him how to live, And, oh still harder lesson! how to die.

69. This noble ensample to his shepe he yaf,- That first he wrought, and afterwards he taught.

70. But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve, He taught; but first he folwed it himselve.

71. What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the

72. [He] wondered if it was already too late to teach her how to be a human

73. There are three lessons I would write, Three words as with a burning pen, In tracings of eternal light Upon the hearts of men.

74. A man may well bring a horse to water, But he cannot make him drink without he will.

75. When I get things -- when I really get something -- I have a talent for being able to communicate it and help others get it faster and better than I did. It's probably my only true talent. I think that I'm a teacher that happens to be a decent filmmaker. And that I happen to be able to use the visual narrative form in an effective way. I think I use television in a relatively positive way.

76. I think the part of my job that I take most seriously is being an educator. If I can get people interested enough in food to adventure into it themselves and to understand it better -- that's what my fondest hope is.

77. All right, kids. Up to this point, I've been okay with you drifting away, going into the kitchen, getting a beverage or maybe some reference books to look up all the ingredients today. But at this point on, you have got to stay RIGHT THERE. Let's get back to the action!

78. As an instructor, you must be able to distinguish between poor performance caused by lack of ability or aptitude on the part of the student and poor performance caused by lack of effort. You should treat the first with patience and the latter with firmness. You must never apply sarcasm and ridicule.

79. There is no fixed teaching. All I can provide is an appropriate medicine for a particular ailment.

80. There were these two kids - everybody thought I was cruel because one day he (the youngest boy) fell in a three foot ditch. There was a lot of bushes, the slope was three or four feet above the ditch. Down there it was muddy and he was crying. Others standing around said, 'Help him out', but I didn't. I said, 'Watch'. About twenty minutes passed or so and he stopped crying and started to climb out on his own. And the second time he tried to climb out he fell back down, but kept on climbing out more. Finally when he made it, climbed out, he was really tired, and stood in front of me and smiled. I pushed him back in the ditch again.

81. Well, obviously, I didn`t expect the career. I always hoped that I`d be able to do something, whether it be as a teacher back home in North Carolina or working with some type of non-profit in some way. As the career took form, I kind of feel like it`s every celebrity`s responsibility really. I kind of like to look at this as an opportunity, I guess, to teach in a bigger classroom.'

82. ' In the last ten years, as editor in chief of Today's Caregiver Magazine, I have interviewed many people who are living in the public eye, all of them having something of importance to say to family caregivers. Most times they've become caregivers after becoming famous, usually due to themselves or a family member taking ill. Our keynote speaker today is unique in that he is a professionally trained caregiver before he became known to all of us. And through the unbelievable constraints that have been placed on his time, he's never lost sight of his goal of becoming a teacher and helping children living with developmental disabilities. Only his classroom has become a whole lot larger than he ever expected.

83. Indeed, a constant element of enjoyment must be mingled with our studies, so that we think of learning as a game rather than a form of drudgery.

84. Example is the best lesson there is.

85. I expect you'll be becoming a schoolmaster, sir. That's what most of the gentlemen does, sir, that gets sent down for indecent behaviour.

86. Beware of someone who wants to teach you something.

87. Always in these matters desiring rather to be taught than to teach.

88. Of studie took he most cure and most hede. Noght o word spak he more than was nede, And that was seyd in forme and reverence, And short and quik, and ful of hy sentence. Souninge in moral vertu was his speche, And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.

89. But yet that holden this tale a folly, As of a fox, or of a cock and hen, Taketh the morality, good men. For Saint Paul saith that all that written is, To our doctrine it is y-writ, ywis; Taketh the fruit, and let the chaff be still.

90. Deep Throat: think about it. There is actually a semi-important figure in American history who is named for a blow-job movie. How do school teachers handle this?

91. 'The best of those amongst you is the one who learns the Qur'an and then teaches it to others.'

92. When may we hope to see your Harvard lectures published sir?' an undergraduate asked the late Professor Austin. 'You may hope to see them published any time' was the characteristic reply.

93. I've never set out to teach anyone anything. It's been more of an expression of my views and feelings than sitting down and deciding 'What is today's message?' And I do think that, although I never, again, sat down consciously and thought about this, I do think judging, even for my own daughter, that children respond to that than to 'thought for the day.'

94. Literature is no longer Necessary Teaching is left.

95. The most important thing any teacher has to learn, not to be learned in any school of education I ever heard of, can be expressed in seven words: Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners.

96. We're millions that are crying about John Paul II; his teaching is going to follow us all our life, permanently.

97. We are not so absurd as to propose that the teacher should not set forth his own opinions as the true ones and exert his utmost powers to exhibit their truth in the strongest light. To abstain from this would be to nourish the worst intellectual habit of all, that of not finding, and not looking for, certainty in any teacher. But the teacher himself should not be held to any creed; nor should the question be whether his own opinions are the true ones, but whether he is well instructed in those of other people, and, in enforcing his own, states the arguments for all conflicting opinions fairly.

98. Those who can, do; those who can't, teach. And those who can't teach, go into administration.

99. Children take in much more and with less labour through their ears than through their eyes.

100. If you would have your fiction live forever, you must neither overtly preach nor overtly teach; but you must covertly preach and covertly teach.