Dedicating your life to teaching and learning is a gift to the world. These education quotes are excellent for reminding teachers why they teach. Plus, there are lots of ways to use quotes about education in the classroom, from journal prompts and discussion/debate topics to inspiration for setting goals, overcoming challenges, and more.
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Education Quote Posters
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Inspirational Quotes by Today’s Educators
Take a look at these thoughts from modern teachers and education influencers for some up-to-date inspiration!
“Teaching is the most defiantly, rebelliously hopeful thing we can do in this world.”
—Andrea Michelle (@educatorandrea), Assistant Professor of Teaching and Learning at Indiana State University
“Part of being a good teacher is knowing when to be quiet. Students need a chance to make meaning without guessing what we want to hear.”
—Betsy Potash (@nowsparkcreativity), ELA Teacher
“The true purpose of education isn’t perfection or even data, it’s possibility. When students feel seen, supported, and safe to make mistakes, learning becomes something they can carry for life.”
—Jere Chang (@mschanggifted), Elementary School Gifted Teacher
“As you sit and read this, there is a child somewhere counting down the seconds until they can be in your classroom with you again. That alone should be enough to remind you of why you became a teacher.”
—Adam Peterson (@adampetersoneducation), Adam Peterson Education
“The fact that you worry about being a good teacher means that you already are one.”
—Amany Elgendy (@misselgendy), Kindergarten Teacher
“Education has the power to reach far beyond any classroom. When learners begin to believe in themselves, doors open to new skills, new goals, and new futures. I’m grateful to be part of that journey, because practice makes progress.”
—Deidre Kelly (@the_mrskelly), 6th Grade Math Teacher
Education Quotes To Remind Students Why Learning Matters
A true education is about much more than just memorizing facts and passing tests. Learning opens our minds and makes life meaningful and complete. Share these quotes with your students during morning meetings, or ask them to choose one and illustrate it to create art for your walls.
“Real education should educate us out of self into something far finer; into a selflessness which links us with all humanity.” —Nancy Astor
“Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it.” —Marian Wright Edelman
“Education is our only political safety. Outside of this ark all is deluge.” —Horace Mann
“Education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know.” —Daniel J. Boorstin
“The child who desires education will be bettered by it; the child who dislikes it disgraced.” —John Ruskin
“Instruction ends in the schoolroom, but education ends only with life. A child is given to the universe to be educated.” —Frederick William Robertson
“It makes little difference how many university courses or degrees a person may own. If he cannot use words to move an idea from one point to another, his education is incomplete.” —Norman Cousins
“The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.” —Herbert Spencer
“The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.” —John F. Kennedy
“There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live.” —James Truslow Adams
“Education without social action is a one-sided value because it has no true power potential.” —Martin Luther King Jr.
“Education should train the child to use his brains, to make for himself a place in the world and maintain his rights even when it seems that society would shove him into the scrap-heap.” —Helen Keller
“Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given us by education.” —Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“The good Education of Youth has been esteemed by wise Men in all Ages, as the surest Foundation of Happiness.” —Benjamin Franklin
“The more that you read, the more things you will know.
The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” —Dr. Seuss
Quotes About Education and Equality
Throughout history, people have agreed: Education opens doors. That’s why it’s so important to offer the same high-quality learning opportunities to every child, and support them through as much higher education as they’d like to pursue. Use these quotes to start a classroom discussion about equality in education, and find out how your students feel about it.
“Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery.” —Horace Mann
“Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?” —Erich Fromm
“The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.” —Plato
“Until we get equality in education, we won’t have an equal society.” —Sonia Sotomayor
“In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education.” —Earl Warren
“My father says that education is neither Eastern nor Western. Education is education: It’s the right of everyone.” —Malala Yousafzai
“History shows that the nations that do best are the ones that invest in the education of their people.” —Barack Obama
“Education is the key to opportunity in our society, and the equality of educational opportunity must be the birthright of every citizen.” —Lyndon B. Johnson
Quotes About Education To Encourage Teamwork
We spend a lot of time helping to foster a sense of cooperation and teamwork among students, because people working together can often achieve much more than when they work on their own. Share these inspirational words before starting a new group project, and find more teamwork quotes here.
“Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t.” —Bill Nye
“To teach is to learn twice.” —Joseph Joubert
“No one, however smart, however well educated, however experienced, is the suppository of all wisdom.” —Tony Abbott
“Involve people in the problem and work out the solution together.” —Stephen Covey
“Learning is a result of listening, which in turn leads to even better listening and attentiveness to the other person.” —Alice Miller
“Collaboration is important not just because it’s a better way to learn … learning to collaborate is part of equipping yourself for effectiveness, problem-solving, innovation and life-long learning in an ever-changing networked economy.” —Don Tapscott
“The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.” —Eric Hoffer
Education Quotes To Help Students Overcome Challenges
Everyone faces adversity at some point in their educational journey. As you help your students build a growth mindset, use quotes like these to inspire them to keep on trying. (Plus, explore 125+ more growth mindset quotes!)
“Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.” —Abigail Adams
“Real education must ultimately be limited to one who INSISTS on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.” —Ezra Pound
“A writer should get as much education as possible, but just going to school is not enough; if it were, all owners of doctorates would be inspired writers.” —Gwendolyn Brooks
“Apply yourself. Get all the education you can, but then, by God, do something. Don’t just stand there, make it happen.” —Lee Iacocca
“Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight. … When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.” —Helen Keller
“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” —Robert Frost
“Education is … hanging around until you’ve caught on.” —Robert Frost
“Learning starts with failure. The first failure is the beginning of education.” —John Richard Hersey
“The process of learning requires not only hearing and applying but also forgetting and then remembering again.” —John Gray
“Your duty is to keep trying to do things that you don’t do well, in the hope of learning.” —John Banville
“Once you embrace unpleasant news, not as a negative but as evidence of a need for change, you aren’t defeated by it. You’re learning from it.” —Bill Gates
“I have made my limitations tools of learning and true joy.” —Helen Keller
“Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both.” —Thomas Jefferson
“The best way to learn something is from experience—to actually try doing the task or activity. Great learning can come when you face challenge and difficulty and when you might not succeed.” —Nigel Cumberland
Education Quotes About Critical Thinking
Reciting facts isn’t really learning, as any teacher can tell you. Instead, the ultimate goal of education should be to teach students the importance of thinking critically. Quotes like these inspire students to take a closer look at what they’re learning, analyzing and interpreting information through multiple lenses.
“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. … Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.” —Martin Luther King Jr.
“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” —Margaret Mead
“That is the one eternal education: to be sure enough that something is true that you dare to tell it to a child.” —G.K. Chesterton
“My own education operated by a succession of eye-openers each involving the repudiation of some previously held belief.” —George Bernard Shaw
“Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.” —Charlotte Brontë
“Sixty years ago I knew everything. Now I know nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.” —Will Durant
“The more a man thinks the better adapted he becomes to thinking, and education is nothing if it is not the methodical creation of the habit of thinking.” —Ernest Dimnet
“Education ought to foster the wish for truth, not the conviction that some particular creed is the truth.” —Bertrand Russell
“I am suggesting that quality in undergraduate education means giving students a perspective that is global.” —Ernest L. Boyer
“The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks.” —Albert Einstein
Quotes About Education To Use When Setting Goals
Setting goals helps students determine their focus, work step-by-step toward an objective, and achieve big things! In fact, setting and planning for goals can make the impossible seem possible. As you help your students learn to set goals, share these education quotes to remind them that learning is an ongoing process, one that lasts their whole life long. (Want more goal-setting quotes? Check out this big list!)
“I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.” —Maya Angelou
“Define your goals in terms of the activities necessary to achieve them, and concentrate on those activities.” —Brian Tracy
“Education is not just about getting the right grades in exams but it should encourage all students to develop their optimum capacity, whatever that may be. Schools and colleges should prepare young people for life.” —Richard Branson
“Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” —John Dewey
“One way to keep momentum going is to have constantly greater goals.” —Michael Korda
“Competition is a by-product of productive work, not its goal. A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.” —Ayn Rand
“To solve a problem or to reach a goal, you don’t need to know all the answers in advance. But you must have a clear idea of the problem or the goal you want to reach.” —W. Clement Stone
“Learn as if you were not reaching your goal and as though you were scared of missing it.” —Confucius
Education Quotes for Journal Prompts
These quotes about education will get students thinking, making them perfect for reflective journal entries. Ask them to consider how a quote applies to their own lives, whether or not they agree with it, and how they can use that quote to motivate and inspire them at school and beyond.
“Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs only to the people who prepare for it today.” —Malcolm X
“The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.” —Sydney J. Harris
“Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.” —Malcolm Forbes
“Education is the key to unlock a golden door of freedom.” —George Washington Carver
“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” —Benjamin Franklin
“The roots of education … are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.” —Aristotle
“Education is one thing no one can take away from you.” —Elin Nordegren
“All real education is the architecture of the soul.” —William Bennett (attributed)
“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.” —Henry Ford
“I found that almost everyone had something interesting to contribute to my education.” —Eleanor Roosevelt
Education Quotes for Classroom Discussion and Debate
This list of education quotes includes declarative statements that students may or may not agree with. That makes them terrific to use as a springboard for classroom discussions or as debate topics. Remind students to explore the context for each quote, including the background of the speaker and the circumstances in which they spoke their powerful words. This may influence how they defend or deny the statements.
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” —Nelson Mandela
“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.” —Mark Twain
“Education is the key which will unlock the door of opportunity for you.” —Gordon B. Hinckley
“The highest result of education is tolerance.” —Helen Keller
“Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace.” —Confucius
“Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.” —Isaac Asimov
“It is only the ignorant who despise education.” —Publilius Syrus
“Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.” —Edward Everett
“All of us must recognize that education and innovation will be the currency of the 21st century.” —Barack Obama
Quotes About Education To Inspire Fellow Educators
Teachers need inspiration too! One fun way to spread these quotes is to print each one on a sticky note (it’s so easy … learn how and get a template here) and post them in the teachers lounge, stick them in mailboxes, or drop them on desks when teachers are out to lunch.
“The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.” —George Santayana
“Education must not simply teach work, it must teach life.” —W.E.B Du Bois
“I believe that education is all about being excited about something. Seeing passion and enthusiasm helps push an educational message.” —Steve Irwin
“Everyone who remembers his own education remembers teachers, not methods and techniques. The teacher is the heart of the educational system.” —Sidney Hook
“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.” —Plutarch
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” —Benjamin Franklin
“The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.” —Mark Van Doren
“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” —Henry Brooks Adams
“They may forget what you said but they will never forget how you made them feel.” —Carl W. Buehner
“A good teacher must be able to put himself in the place of those who find learning hard.” —Eliphas Levi
“One child, one teacher, one book, and one pen can change the world.” —Malala Yousafzai
“Teachers are the one and only people who save nations.” —Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
“We are all schoolmasters, and our schoolhouse is the universe.” —Henry David Thoreau
“It was my teacher’s genius, her quick sympathy, her loving tact which made the first years of my education so beautiful. It was because she seized the right moment to impart knowledge that made it so pleasant and acceptable to me.” —Helen Keller
“Education does much, but encouragement is everything.” —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Let early education be a sort of amusement; you will then be better able to find out the natural bent.” —Plato
“The greatest education in the world is watching the masters at work.” —Michael Jackson
“A teacher can never truly teach unless he is still learning himself. A lamp can never light another lamp unless it continues to burn its own flame.” —Rabindranath Tagore
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