Inspirational Education Quotes

Inspirational Education Quotes      M

Harvey MacKay 1932
American businessman, author & columnist
We start out as pretty creative beings. Children let their imaginations take them to places they’ve never seen and do things that seem impossible. We encourage it as fun and playtime, but we should celebrate it as the potential for great discovery and accomplishment.

Nelson Mandela 1918-2013
South African president & anti-apartheid activist
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

Christopher Marley
The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing it’s own thinking.

George R. R. Martin 1948
American author & television writer/producer
A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.

John M. Mason 1770-1829
American preacher & theologian
The aim of education should be to convert the mind into a living fountain, and not a reservoir.

Margaret Mead 1901-1978
American cultural anthropologist, author & speaker
Children must be taught how to think.. Not what to think.

Michael Meade 1944
American author & mythologist
If each person has natural gifts and innate talents, then the true nature of education must involve the awakening, inviting and blessing of the inner genius and unique life spirit of each young person.

Alfred Mercier 1816-1894
American doctor, writer & author
What we learn with pleasure.. We never forget.

Bradley Millar
Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar, is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar.

Helen Mirren 1945
English actress
Gardening is learning, learning, learning. That’s the fun of it. You’re always learning.

Claude Monet 1840-1926
French artist
It was at home I learned the little I know. Schools always appeared to me like a prison, and never could I make up my mind to stay there, not even for four hours a day, when the sunshine was inviting, the sea smooth, and when it was joy to run about the cliffs in the free air, or to paddle in the water.

Michel de Montaigne 1533-1592
French philosopher & writer
The world is but a school of enquiry.

Maria Montessori 1870-1952
Italian physician & educator
Education should no longer be mostly imparting knowledge, but must take a new path, seeking the release of human potentialities.

The greatest sign of success for a teacher… is to be able to say, ‘The children are now working as if I did not exist.’

The greatest triumph of our educational method should always be this: to bring about the spontaneous progress of the child.

The greatness of the human personality begins at the hour of birth. From this almost mystic affirmation there comes what may seem a strange conclusion: that education must start from birth.

The most important period of life is not the age of university studies, but the first one, the period from birth to the age of six.

Charles Morgan
As knowledge increases, wonder deepens.

Movie – A Tree Grows In Brooklyn (1945)
Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words.

John Muir 1838-1914
Scottish-American naturalist & author
The power of imagination makes us infinite.

Robert Muller 1923-2010
Belgian author & assistant secretary-general of United Nations
A journal helps us to live our life time and again. There is no greater life enhancer, life-expander and teacher than a journal.

Adults are the first and foremost teachers of love, peace, truth, tolerance, happiness and spirituality to their children. No school on Earth can ever replace them.

Art can dissect and analyze and art can compose and harmonize. The scientific age was accompanies by a dissecting and analytical art. The holistic age is seeing the rebirth of a composing and harmonizing art.

Art is spirituality. Art is thought. Art is imagination. Art is feeling. Art is action. Art is the highest expression of life, of being. Art and life must be one.

Art makes humans co-creators with God. It is therefore a Holy, Divine activity.

Each day of life is precious even incredibly precious: therefore write the history of each day. Keep a journal. Preserve your life. Journal keeping should be taught in all schools of Earth.

Each mother and father should devote quite some time to the family’s history. An entire new science and art of family and individual history should be developed and taught: ancestry, genealogy, name etymology, oral history, written history, pictorial history, family heirlooms and souvenirs, scrapbooks, photo collections etc.. What deep joys can be derived from family history! It increases the love and role of the family, the fundamental, basic social unit.

Learn proverbs.
Speak in proverbs.
Teach with proverbs.
They are humanity’s most condensed form of wisdom.

Life is Divine.. Das Leben ist g ttlich. I wish this exclamation of mine as a child were translated in all languages and displayed in every school on Earth.

Robert Muller 1923-2010
Belgian author & assistant secretary-general of United Nations
Love must become the subject of serious scientific study. Loved children are healthier, happier, more peaceful children. Loved husbands have seldom heart attacks. Loved plants grow better. Loved animals are not vicious. Loved nations do not wage war. A humanity of loving people will be a peaceful humanity. To promote love means therefore to promote peace. Yes, let us have a love logy, a science of love, to start with a World University of Love.

Never cease to learn life from yourself and from others. Write it all down to perfect yourself and to impart your wisdom to those who will follow.

Robert Muller 1923-2010
Belgian author & assistant secretary-general of United Nations
No university on Earth gives master’s degrees of living, of happiness. How strange! We seem to be missing the essential, the all-encompassing knowledge for which universities were originally created!

Read only good books, inspiring books, non-depressing books. Do not waste money on prefabricated best-sellers. Read a few pages of them before disbursing your money. Know that they are not supposed to last, since your money will be solicited almost immediately for the next one. Seek books which you will keep and read time and again for your happiness, enrichment and life fulfillment.

The example of parents is the greatest teacher. Parents must stand out as models of happiness to their children.

The family is the first and greatest school of love, peace and happiness on Earth.

Robert Muller 1923-2010
Belgian author & assistant secretary-general of United Nations
There is no greater learning process than to teach.

We do not see the world as it is.. We see it as we are taught to see it. The same is generally true of our view of humanity, of the Universe, of history and of ourselves. Free yourself, escape from the possible falsehoods.

Writing and art are preserved life, a form of duration, of eternity.

Haruki Murakami 1949
Japanese author
If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.

The most important thing we learn at school is the fact that the most important things can’t be learned in school.

Inspirational Education Quotes       N

Native American
If we wonder often, the gift of knowledge will come.

Our first teacher is our own heart.

Native American
Tell them how we loved all that was beautiful.

Inspirational Education Quotes       P

Helen Peters
Teacher appreciation makes the world of education go around.

Austin Phelps 1820-1890
American congregational minister & educator
Wear the old coat and buy the new book.

Jean Piaget 1896-1980
Swiss psychologist
Are we forming children who are only capable of learning what is already known? Or should we try to develop creative and innovative minds, capable of discovery from the preschool age on, throughout life?

Education for most people, means trying to lead the child to resemble the typical adult of his society. But for me, education means making creators. You have to make inventors, innovators, not conformists.

Play is the answer to how anything new comes about.

Scientific knowledge is in perpetual evolution; it finds itself changed from one day to the next.

The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done.

Jean Piaget 1896-1980
Swiss psychologist
When you teach a child something you take away forever his chance of discovering it for himself.

Pablo Picasso 1881-1973
Spanish artist
I paint as I think them, not as I see them.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

Rita Pierson 1951-2013
American teacher & speaker
Every child needs a champion - an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection, and insists that they become the best that they can possibly be.

Kids don’t learn from people they don’t like.

Teaching and learning should bring joy.

Plato 429BC-347BC
Ancient Greek philosopher
Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.

For the object of education is to teach us about beauty.

Geometry will draw the Soul toward the truth and create the spirit of philosophy.

Human behaviour flows from three main sources: desire, emotion and knowledge.

Knowledge that is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.

The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.

The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things.

Plutarch 46-120
Greek philosopher, historian & priest
The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.

Henri Poincare 1854-1912
French mathematician & philosopher of science
It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover.

Natalie Portman 1981
Israeli-American actress
I don’t love studying. I hate studying. I like learning. Learning is beautiful.

Proverb
By nature all men are alike, but by education very different.

Jacqueline E. Purcell
You must unlearn what you have been programmed to believe since birth. That software no longer serves you if you want to live in a world where all things are possible.

William Purkey 1929-2024
Educator & author
Education is about inviting every single person who enters a school to realize his or her relatively boundless potential in all areas of worthwhile human endeavour. It is concerned with more than grades, attendance and academic achievement. It is concerned with the progress of becoming a decent and productive human being.

Human potential, though not always apparent, is there waiting to be discovered and invited forth.

Inspirational Education Quotes       R

Isidor Isaac Rabi 1898-1988
American physicist
Science is a great game. It is inspiring and refreshing. The playing field is the Universe itself.

Josh Radnor 1974
American actor, filmmaker & musician
I think that the mark of a great book is that it will meet you wherever you’re at and you’ll feel and experience something new and different each time you read it.

M. C. Richards 1916-1999
American poet & potter
All the arts we practice are apprenticeships. The big art is life.

Poetry often enters through the window of irrelevance.

Ken Robinson 1950-2020
English author, speaker & advisor on education
Human intelligence is richer and more dynamic than we have been led to believe by formal academic education.

If you sit kids down, hour after hour, doing low-grade clerical work, don’t be surprised if they start to fidget. Children are not, for the most part, suffering from a psychological condition, they’re suffering from childhood.

Imagination is the source of all human achievement.

Theodore Roethke 1908-1963
American poet & author
I learn by going where I have to go.

John Roger
Explain to your kids that tests at school do not record their failure. Tests show areas where they can learn and grow, and point up their strengths. They are a reference point to know how they are doing, and to show them where to do more work.

Jim Rohn 1930-2009
American motivational speaker & author
If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn’t need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around.

Eleanor Roosevelt 1884-1962
American First lady of United States
The giving of love is an education in itself.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712-1778
Swiss-French philosopher
Teach your scholar to observe the phenomena of nature; you will soon rouse his curiosity, but if you would have it grow, do not be in too great a hurry to satisfy this curiosity.

Put the problems before him and let him solve then himself. Let him know nothing because you have told him, but because he has learnt it for himself. Let him not be taught science, let him discover it.

If ever you substitute authority for reason he will cease to reason; he will be a mere plaything of other people’s thoughts.

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

J. K. Rowling 1965
British author & philanthropist
There’s always room for a story that can transport people to another place.

John Ruskin 1819-1900
English writer, philosopher & polymath
All books are divisible into two classes.. the books of the hour and the books of all time.

Bertrand Russell 1872-1970
British philosopher, writer & peace campaigner
The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.

Inspirational Education Quotes       S

Carl Sagan 1934-1996
American astronomer & planetary scientist
One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for one thousand years. To read is to voyage through time.

When you make the finding yourself, even if you are the last person on Earth to see the light, you will never forget it.

What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dear for thousands of years… Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.

George Santayana 1863-1952
Spanish-American philosopher, novelist & poet
A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.

Arthur Schopenhauer 1788-1860
German philosopher & author
Education perverts the mind since we are directly opposing the natural development of our mind by obtaining ideas first and observations last. This is why so few men of learning have such sound common sense as is quite common among the illiterate.

Chief Seattle 1780-1866
Native American Chief of Duwamish & Suquamish tribes
Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the Earth is our mother? What befalls the Earth befalls the sons of the Earth.

This we know: the Earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the Earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

Seneca 4BC-65AD
Roman philosopher & statesman
Even while they teach.. Men learn.

Keep learning.. to the end of your life.

So long as you live, keep learning how to live.

Dr Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) 1904-1991
American children’s author & cartoonist
Fill your house with stacks of books, in all the crannies and all the nooks.

Dr Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) 1904-1991
American children’s author & cartoonist
The more you read, the more things you will know.
The more things you learn, the more places you’ll go.

Why fit in when you were born to stand out?

Dr Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) 1904-1991
American children’s author & cartoonist
You can find magic wherever you look. Sit back and relax, all you need is a book.

George Bernard Shaw 1856-1950
Irish playwright & critic
From a very early age I’ve interrupted by education.. To go to school.

The only time my education was interrupted was when I was in school.

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

Charles W. Shedd 1915-2004
Presbyterian minister, author & columnist
Some of the worlds best educators are grandparents.

Sitting Bull (Chief) 1831-1890
Native American chief of Dakota Sioux tribe
In my early days I was eager to learn and to do things, and therefore I learned quickly.

Sydney Smith 1771-1845
English Anglican cleric & writer
No furniture so charming as books.

Will Smith 1968
American actor, singer & film producer
The things that have been most valuable to me, I did not learn in school.

Socrates 470BC-399BC
Greek philosopher
I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.

Robert Southey 1774-1843
English poet
Give me a room whose every nook is dedicated to a book.

Go forth, little book, from this my solitude
I cast thee on the waters, go thy ways
And if, as I believe, thy vein be good
The world will find thee after many days
Be it with thee according to thy worth
Go, little book - in faith I send thee forth

Our knowledge is our power, and God our strength.

Bruce Springsteen 1949
American singer-songwriter & guitarist
One problem with the way the educational system is set up is that it only recognizes a certain type of intelligence, and it’s incredibly restrictive, very, very restrictive. There’s so many types of intelligence, and people who would be at their best outside of that structure get lost.

Rudolf Steiner 1861-1925
Austrian scientist, philosopher & social reformer
Our highest endeavour must be to develop free human beings who are able of themselves to impart purpose and direction to their lives. The need for imagination, a sense of truth, and a feeling of responsibility - these three forces are the very nerve of education.

Receive the children in reverence, educate them in love, and send them forth in freedom.

Jose Stevens & Lena Stevens
President & co-founders of Power Path school & authors
Imagination connects us with the web of power and the spirit in all things.

Paul Sweeney
You know you’ve read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend

Inspirational Education Quotes       T

Talmud
Jewish scriptures book
He who has more learning than goodness is like a tree with many branches and few roots, which the first wind throws down; whilst he whose works are greater than his knowledge is like a tree with many roots and fewer branches, which all the winds of heaven cannot uproot.

The best preacher is the heart; the best teacher is time; the best book is the world; the best friend is God.

Mother Teresa 1910-1997
Albanian-Indian Catholic nun
The greatest science in the world - in Heaven and on Earth - is love.

We must know that we have been created for greater things, not just to be a number in the world, not just to go for diplomas and degrees, this work and that work. We have been created in order to love and to be loved.

Nikola Tesla 1856-1943
Serbian-American inventor & electrical engineer
If you want to find the secrets of the Universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.

Nikola Tesla 1856-1943
Serbian-American inventor & electrical engineer
My brain is only a receiver. In the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists.

The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of existence.

Lewis Thomas 1913-1993
American physician, poet & essayist
We are educated to be amazed by the infinite variety of life forms in nature. We are, I believe, only at the beginning of being flabbergasted by its unity.

Henry David Thoreau 1817-1862
American naturalist, essayist & poet
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know.. That is true knowledge.

We need the tonic of wildness.. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.

Alexandra Trentor
The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don’t tell you what to see.

Truth Theory
Facebook page
Trust the science’ is the most anti science statement ever. Questioning science is how you do science.

When compliance and conformity is rewarded and any shred of critical thinking is punished, when the purpose of education has become to teach how to obey orders.. you get a society helplessly dependent on authority, desperately magnetised by tyranny and hopelessly afraid of freedom.

When your education limits your imagination, it’s called indoctrination.

TV – Game Of Thrones  (2011-2019)
A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone if it is to keep its edge.

Mark Twain 1835-1910
American writer, humorist & essayist
Never let schooling interfere with your education.

Lao Tzu 600BC
Ancient Chinese philosopher
I have just three things to teach.. Simplicity, Patience, Compassion. These are your greatest treasures.

To become learned.. Each day add something.
To become enlightened.. Each day drop something.

Inspirational Education Quotes       U

Brenda Ueland 1891-1985
American journalist & editor
Imagination needs ‘moodling’… long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.

Inspirational Education Quotes       V

Ama H. Vanniarachchy
Sri Lankan writer, journalist & illustrator
The love for books, the love for art and literature gives me inspirations to write more and more.

Krissy Venosdale
Learning is their journey. Let them navigate.
Push them to explore. Watch them discover.
Encourage their questions. Allow them to struggle.
Support their thinking. Let them fly.

Gore Vidal 1925-2012
American writer
The unfed mind devours itself.

Leonardo da Vinci 1452-1519
Italian artist, scientist & inventor
Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.

Learning never exhausts the mind.

Principles For The Development Of A Complete Mind
Study the science of art.
Study the art of science.
Develop your senses, especially learn how to see.
Realise that everything connects to everything else.

Leonardo da Vinci 1452-1519
Italian artist, scientist & inventor
Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.

Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art.

Inspirational Education Quotes       W

Neale Donald Walsch 1943
American author & channeller
Build your schools around concepts, not academic subjects: core concepts such as awareness, honesty, responsibility, freedom and diversity in oneness. Teach your children these things and you will have taught them grandly.

When you give your children knowledge, you are telling them what to think. When you give your children wisdom, you do not tell them what to know, or what is true, but rather, how to get to their own truth.

William Arthur Ward 1921-1994
American motivational writer & poet
Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning.

William Arthur Ward 1921-1994
American motivational writer & poet
Teaching is more than imparting knowledge, it is inspiring change. Learning is more than absorbing facts, it is acquiring understanding.

Warpaint Journal (on X)***
A generation of kids growing up without reading books isn’t just a generation that reads less – it’s a generation slowly losing the muscle for empathy. Because books aren’t just stories.

They’re training grounds for imagination, for slipping into someone else’s life, someone else’s grief, joy, fear, or mess. They teach you to sit with feelings that aren’t yours.

Without that, how do you learn to care about people who aren’t like you? How do you build a world where you pause before judging, listen before reacting, understand before dismissing?

Isaac Watts 1674-1748
English minister & prolific hymnwriter
Nothing tends so much to enlarge the mind as travelling, that is, making visits to other towns, cities, or countries beside those in which we are born and educated.

Paul Wellstone 1944-2002
American politician & author
The first task of teaching is to bring to consciousness what the students already believe, by virtue of their personal experiences about themselves and society.

Walt Whitman 1819-1892
American poet, essayist & journalist
This is what you should do: love the Earth and sun and the animals, despise the riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labour to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men… re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss what insults your own Soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem.

John Greenleaf Whittier 1807-1892
American Quaker poet & abolitionist
The best of a book is not the thought it contains, but the thought it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.

Ray Lyman Wilbur 1875-1949
American politician & physician
The potential possibilities of any child are the most intriguing and stimulating in all creation.

Oscar Wilde 1854-1900
Irish poet & playwright
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time, that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

Anthony Douglas Williams 1953
Canadian spiritualist, writer & author
Every parent is a teacher.. But not all parents teach.

Life is the best teacher.

John Wilson 1785-1854
Scottish advocate, literary critic & author

Oh, for a book and a shady nook
Either in-a-door or out
With the green leaves whispering overhead
Or the street cry all about
Where I may read all at my ease
Both of the new and old
For a jolly good book whereon to look
Is better to me than gold

John Wooden 1910-2010
American basketball player & coach
Being a role model is the most powerful form of educating. Youngsters need good role models more than they need critics. It’s one of parent’s greatest responsibilities and opportunities.

Being a role model is the most powerful form of education. Too often fathers neglect it because they get so caught up in making a living they forget to make a life.

Drink deeply from good books, especially the Bible.

You haven’t taught until they’ve learned.

You must have respect, which is a part of love, for those under your supervision. Then they will do what you ask and more.

Virginia Woolf 1882-1941
English author
Every secret of a writer’s Soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.

Read a thousand books and your words will flow like a river.

William Wordsworth 1770-1850
English poet
Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.

Inspirational Education Quotes     Y

William Butler Yeats 1865-1939
Irish poet, dramatist & writer
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

Malala Yousafzai 1997
Pakistani education activist
One child, one teacher, one pen and one book.. Can change the world.

Inspirational Education Quotes        Z

Frank Zappa 1940-1993
American musician, composer & activist
Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system. Forget about the Senior Prom and go to the library and educate yourself if you’ve got any guts.

I believe that schools mechanically and very specifically try and breed out any hint of creative thought in the kids that are coming out.

Kid’s heads are filled with so many nonfacts that when they get our of school they’re totally unprepared to do anything. They can’t read, they can’t write, they can’t think. Talk about child abuse. The U.S. school system as whole qualifies.

Schools train people to be ignorant, with style. They give you the equipment that you need to be a functional ignoramus. American schools do not equip you to deal with things like logic; they don’t give you the criteria by which to judge between good and bad in any medium or format; and they prepare you to be a usable victim for a military industrial complex that needs manpower. As long as you’re just smart enough to do a job, and just dumb enough to swallow what they feed you, you’re going to be alright.

William Zinsser 1922-2015
American journalist, writer & editor
Writing is thinking on paper.

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