Quotes that Hold the True Meaning of Education

Great quotes make complexity simple! The following have three themes in common: 1) They speak to parents and teachers, 2) They support research in youth development and education, and 3) They provide impetus toward adult actions that support learning.

1. “Education...is painful, continual and difficult work to be done in kindness, by watching, by warning,...  by praise, but above all -- by example.” -- John Ruskin
    
2. “The job of an educator is to teach students to see the vitality in themselves.” -- Joseph Campbell
   
3. “There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fills you with so much quail shot that you can't move, and the kind that just gives you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies.” -- Robert Frost
    
4. “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.’” -- Maria Montessori
    
5. “Education is not to reform students or amuse them or to make them expert technicians. It is to unsettle their minds, widen their horizons, inflame their intellects, teach them to think straight, if possible.” -- Robert M. Hutchins
   
6. “It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it. “ -- Jacob Bronowski
   
7. “Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best.” -- Bob Talber
   
8. "Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." -- Benjamin Franklin
    
9. “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” -- Anonymous
    
10. “The important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle.” -- Pierre de Coubertin
     
11. "Creativity is especially expressed in the ability to make connections, to make associations, to turn things around and express them in a new way." --Tim Hansen
     
12. “Always to see the general in the particular is the very foundation of genius.” -- Arthur Schopenhauer
     
13. "Stay committed to your decisions; but stay flexible in your approach." --Tony Robbins
     
14. "They may forget what you said but they will never forget how you made them feel." -- Carol Buchner
    
15. "Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them become what they are capable of becoming." -- Goethe
     
16. "Every truth has four corners: as a teacher I give you one corner, and it is for you to find the other three." -- Confucius
     
17. “Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.” -- Josef Albers
    
18. “Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted... but to weigh and consider.”—Francis Bacon
     
19. “Let the potential artist in our children come to life that they may surmount industrial monotonies and pressures.” -- Barbara Morgan
     
20. “Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher.” -- William Wordsworth