Top 90 Andy Hargreaves Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “On assessment: measure what you value instead of valuing only what you can measure.”

— Andy Hargreaves

2. “Teachers who believe they can make a real difference in their students’ lives really do.”

— Andy Hargreaves

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3. “Education leaders must have the will at times to release leadership to the teachers the parents and the students.”

— Andy Hargreaves

4. “Too many professional development initiatives are done to teachers – not for, with or by them.”

— Andy Hargreaves

5. “Change is easy to propose, hard to implement, and especially hard to sustain.”

— Andy Hargreaves

6. “Courageous leadership is not fearless leadership. What makes you a leader is how you deal with your fears.”

— Andy Hargreaves

7. “We must use collegiality not to level people down but to bring together their strength and creativity.”

— Andy Hargreaves

8. “If we’re all on the same page, no one’s reading the whole book.”

— Andy Hargreaves

9. “Teaching is a passionate profession.”

— Andy Hargreaves

10. “Teaching is a never-ending story. The work is never over; the job is never done.”

— Andy Hargreaves

11. “There is no algorithm for creativity.”

— Andy Hargreaves

12. “Don’t raise the bar and narrow the gap, but narrow the gap to raise the bar.”

— Andy Hargreaves

13. “Sustainable leadership does not compromise the future by expanding and accelerating too quickly in the present.”

— Andy Hargreaves

14. “Professional trust is a process, not a state.”

— Andy Hargreaves

15. “Teachers create and transform energy. They are the dynamos of educational change.”

— Andy Hargreaves

16. “The most important emotion in classrooms is surprise.”

— Andy Hargreaves

17. “On school culture: It’s hard to eat something you’ve had a relationship with.”

— Andy Hargreaves

18. “Every learner has special needs.”

— Andy Hargreaves

19. “Capacity building originally meant helping people to help themselves. Now it means required training to deliver imposed policies.”

— Andy Hargreaves

20. “What we want for our students we should want for our teachers: learning, challenge, support, and respect.”

— Andy Hargreaves

21. “In collaborative cultures, failure and uncertainty are not protected but shared and discussed to gain support.”

— Andy Hargreaves

22. “High performing organizations have cultures of creativity and risk. They encourage workers to innovate and play.”

— Andy Hargreaves

23. “We learn more from people who are different from us than ones who are the same.”

— Andy Hargreaves

24. “Although everyone wants to change the teacher, it’s time for the agents of educational reform to change themselves.”

— Andy Hargreaves

25. “All teachers are already leaders. It’s in the nature of teaching.”

— Andy Hargreaves

26. “Improvement is about doing something better; innovation is about doing something new.”

— Andy Hargreaves

27. “Too often, shared visions really mean, “I have a vision; you share it!””

— Andy Hargreaves

28. “There is no morality without temptation; otherwise it is just lack of opportunity.”

— Andy Hargreaves

29. “Arrogance is the conjoined twin of ignorance.”

— Andy Hargreaves

30. “We need standards with flexibility, not standardization with force if we are to get the best from our teachers.”

— Andy Hargreaves

31. “Pompous asses knows how to put the moan in sanctimonious.”

— Andy Hargreaves

32. “Excellence is the asymptotic state that never quite reaches perfection.”

— Andy Hargreaves

33. “Sustainable leadership does no harm to and actively improves the surrounding environment.”

— Andy Hargreaves

34. “Leadership is often the afterthought of educational change.”

— Andy Hargreaves

35. “High performance leaders capitalize on crises to galvanize the motivation and actions of people in the organization.”

— Andy Hargreaves

36. “Every solution has a problem.”

— Andy Hargreaves

37. “A brainscan cannot interpret itself and neither can a data dashboard in education.”

— Andy Hargreaves

38. “Human growth is not like rhubarb. It can be nurtured and encouraged but it cannot be forced.”

— Andy Hargreaves

39. “You cannot switch teachers on and off as if they were PowerPoint presentations.”

— Andy Hargreaves

40. “A successful school has to engage all the people, all the powers, and all the capacities within it.”

— Andy Hargreaves

41. “On teacher education: induction into current mandates must not turn into seduction away from best practice.”

— Andy Hargreaves

42. “Teachers still command great respect in the families and societies of many Asian cultures.”

— Andy Hargreaves

43. “Schools often get the teachers they deserve!”

— Andy Hargreaves

44. “Educational reforms are like ripe fruit. They rarely travel well.”

— Andy Hargreaves

45. “Walking makes us take problems in our stride.”

— Andy Hargreaves

46. “Adolescence is about digging out the iron inside irony.”

— Andy Hargreaves

47. “One or two bad teachers is a problem with the teachers. A school with many bad teachers is a problem of leadership.”

— Andy Hargreaves

48. “When the purge of teacher individualism is unrestrained, eccentricity, initiative and individuality become the casualties.”

— Andy Hargreaves

49. “Students and their families carry more responsibility for student success in the East.”

— Andy Hargreaves

50. “Teachers who don’t pull their weight drag down the profession and their colleagues with it.”

— Andy Hargreaves