Top 40 Teacher Quotes (2023 Update)

1. “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”

— Margaret Mead

2. “Teachers can change lives with just the right mix of chalk and challenges.”

— Joyce Meyer

3. “Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.”

— Napoleon Hill

4. “Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace.”

— Confucius

Also featured in: Confidence Quotes, Education Quotes

5. “When the student is ready the teacher will appear.”

— Laozi

Also featured in: School Quotes

6. “Anything which is troubling you, anything which is irritating you, THAT is your teacher.”

— Ajahn Chah

7. “Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.”

— Jonathan Swift

8. “I’m not a teacher, but an awakener.”

— Robert Frost

Also featured in: Education Quotes

9. “There are no mistakes in life, only lessons. There is no such thing as a negative experience, only opportunities to grow, learn and advance along the road of self-mastery. From struggle comes strength. Even pain can be a wonderful teacher.”

— Robin S. Sharma

Also featured in: Pain Quotes, Mistake Quotes

10. “A teacher should have a creative mind.”

— Abdul Kalam

Also featured in: Creative Quotes

11. “If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.”

— Bill Gates

Also featured in: Boss Quotes

12. “I’m not a teacher: only a fellow traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead – ahead of myself as well as you.”

— George Bernard Shaw

Also featured in: Teaching Quotes

13. “Success is a poor teacher. We learn the most about ourselves when we fail, so don’t be afraid of failing. Failing is part of the process of success. You cannot have success without failure.”

— Robert T. Kiyosaki

14. “The wisest and noblest teacher is nature itself.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

15. “Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.”

— Francis Bacon

Also featured in: Reading Quotes

16. “Make failure your teacher, not your undertaker.”

— Zig Ziglar

Also featured in: Mistake Quotes

17. “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

— Mary Oliver

18. “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”

— Benjamin Franklin

Also featured in: Learning Quotes, Inspiring Quotes

19. “Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.”

— Denis Waitley

20. “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.”

— George Bernard Shaw

Also featured in: Clever Quotes

21. “When you’re going through something hard and you start wondering where Allah is, just remember, the Teacher is always quiet during a test.”

— Nouman Ali Khan

22. “True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create their own.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

23. “Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.”

— Margaret Fuller

Also featured in: Inspirational Quotes, Quotes About Books And Reading

24. “Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach.”

— Tony Robbins

Also featured in: Education Quotes

25. “Education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know.”

— Daniel J. Boorstin

Also featured in: Education Quotes, Knowledge Quotes

26. “Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.”

— Aristotle

27. “Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.”

— Aristotle

28. “High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation.”

— Charles F. Kettering

29. “Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward.”

— Vern Law

Also featured in: Education Quotes

30. “One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.”

— C.G. Jung

Also featured in: Gratitude Quotes, Appreciation Quotes, Quotes About Feelings

31. “The shadow is the greatest teacher for how to come to the light.”

— Ram Dass

32. “If you take responsibility for yourself you will develop a hunger to accomplish your dreams.”

— Les Brown

33. “If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself.”

— Confucius

Also featured in: Dance Quotes

34. “Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.”

— Alfred Tennyson

Also featured in: Education Quotes, Knowledge Quotes

35. “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.”

— Bill Gates

Also featured in: Success Quotes

36. “Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don’t recognize them.”

— Ann Landers

Also featured in: Startup Quotes, Persistence Quotes

37. “Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.”

— Sigmund Freud

Also featured in: Education Quotes

38. “There are many things which no teacher can convey to a child of three, but a child of five can do it with ease.”

— Maria Montessori

39. “This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we go.”

— Pema Chödrön

40. “If we lose the forests, we lose our only teachers.”

— Bill Mollison