Educational Quotations

Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction.

-- Annie Sullivan

Where did we ever get the crazy idea that in order to make children do better, first we have to make them feel worse? Think of the last time you felt humiliated or treated unfairly. Did you feel like cooperating or doing better?

-- Jane Nelson

It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.

-- Albert Einstein

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

-- Alvin Toffler

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

-- Henry B. Adams

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

-- James Baldwin

Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it.

-- Marian Wright Edelman

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.

-- Rachel Carson

Every student can learn, just not on the same day, or the same way.

-- George Evans

Do not train children to learning by force and 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.

-- Plato

They may forget what you said but they will never forget how you made them feel.

-- Carl Buechner

The job of an educator is to teach students to see vitality in themselves.

-- Joseph Campbell  

The kids in our classroom are infinitely more significant than the subject matter we teach.

-- Meladee McCarty

Your heart is slightly bigger than the average human heart, but that's because you're a teacher.

-- Aaron Bacall

Instruction begins when you, the teacher, learn from the learner; put yourself in his place so that you may understand… what he learns and the way he understands it.

-- Soren Kierkegaard

A word as to the education of the heart. We don't believe that this can be imparted through books; it can only be imparted through the loving touch of the teacher.

-- Cesar Chavez

A problem well stated is a problem half solved. 

-- John Dewey

Defining problems carefully at the outset is far more important than generating clever solutions to ill-defined problems

-- Larry Cuban

If we are to reach real peace in this world . . . we shall have to begin with the children.

-- Mahatma Gandhi

We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.

-- Franklin D. Roosevelt

The quality of a civilisation depends not on the material equipment or the political machinery but on the character of men. The major task of education is the improvement of character.

-- Radhakrishnan Report, 1949

I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform. All reforms which rest simply upon the law, or the threatening of certain penalties, or upon changes in mechanical or outward arrangements, are transitory and futile.... But through education society can formulate its own purposes, can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move.... Education thus conceived marks the most perfect and intimate union of science and art conceivable in human experience.

-- John Dewey

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

-- Nelson Mandela 

He who wishes to secure the good of others, has already secured his own. 

--Confucius

Positive relationships formed through warm, sensitive, and responsive care help children feel valued and gain more from their learning experiences. Children need positive relationships so that they feel comfortable and learn how to cooperate with others.

-- US National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)

Education is not just teaching and learning lessons. It has to be concerned about building human values along with knowledge.

-- Dr. Abdul Kalam, Former President of India

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

-- Albert Einstein

Creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.

-- Sir Kenneth Robinson

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.

-- Albert Einstein

We do not grow into creativity, we grow out of it – or rather, we are educated out of it.

-- Sir Kenneth Robinson

No amount of factual information would make ordinary men into educated or 'virtuous' men unless something is awakened in them, an innate ability to live the life of the soul 

-- Plato

All persons require types of experiences through which the elemental desire for friendship, recognition, adventure, creative expression, and group acceptance may be realized.... Favorable conditions of play ... contribute much toward meeting these basic emotional needs.

--  1940 White House Conference on Children and Youth