“Life asks us to make measurable progress in reasonable time. That’s why they make those fourth grade chairs so small.”
– Jim Rohn

“Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.”
– Benjamin Franklin

“It’s never enough to just tell people about some new insight. Rather, you have to get them to experience it in a way that evokes its power and possibility. Instead of pouring knowledge into peoples’ hands, you need to help them grind a new set of eyeglasses so they can see the world in a new way.”
– John Seely Brown

“The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.”
– Anatole France

“Books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and force can put thought in a concentration camp forever. No man and no force can take from the world the books that embody man’s eternal fight against tyranny. In this war, we know, books are weapons.”
– Franklin D. Roosevelt (1942)

“Are we asking our kids to collect dots or connect dots? Because we’re really good at measuring how many dots they collect, how many facts they have memorized, how many boxes they have filled in. But we teach nothing about how to connect those dots.”
– Seth Godin

“Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you’d most like not to lose.”
– Neil Gaiman

“Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.”
– Will Rogers

“Self-discipline is the ability to make yourself do something you don’t necessarily want to do, to get a result you would really like to have.”
– Andy Andrews

“The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.”
– Carl Rogers

“Knowledge–like the sky–is never private property…teaching is the art of sharing.”
– Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Reading well adds to our life—not in the way a tool from the hardware store adds to our life, for a tool does us no good once lost or broken, but in the way a friendship adds to our life, altering us forever.”
― Karen Swallow Prior

“Because we are imperfect souls, our knowledge is imperfect. The history of learning is an adventure in overcoming our errors. There is no sin in being wrong. The sin is in our unwillingness to examine our own beliefs.”
― Neil Postman

“If I can’t give a child a better reason for studying than a grade on a report card, I ought to lock my desk and go home and stay there.”
– Dorothy De Zouche

“Education is the ability to meet life’s situations.”
– John G. Hibben

“It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated.”
– Alec Bourne

“The fact of knowing how to read is nothing. The whole point is knowing what to read.”
– Jacques Ellul

“Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.”
– B. F. Skinner

A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with, the wind.
– John Neal

“Let us cease to consider what, perhaps, may never happen…It is our business to consider what beings like us may perform; each labouring for his own happiness, by promoting within his circle, however narrow, the happiness of others.”
– Samuel Johnson

“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”
– Mortimer Adler

“The most important thing about education is appetite. Education does not begin with the university, and it certainly ought not to end there. I have seen a lot of people who got cleverer until about 21 or 22 years of age, then seemed to shut down altogether and never made any further progress. Take full advantage of these years when the wisdom of the world is placed at your disposal, but do not spend too much time in buckling on your armour in the tent. The battle is going on in every walk and sphere of life.”
– Winston Churchill

“Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.”
– G.K. Chesterton

“Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.”
– Malcolm S. Forbes

“Education could be much more effective if its purpose was to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they do not know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it.”
– William Haley

“Some things you just have to do every day. Eating seven apples on night instead of one a day just isn’t going to get the job done.”
– Jim Rohn

“The most important outcome of education is to help students become independent of formal education.”
– Paul E. Gray

“We cannot hold a torch to light another’s path without brightening our own.”
– Ben Sweetland

“Teachers who inspire know that teaching is like cultivating a garden, and those who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers.”
– Anonymous

“Teachers are expected to reach unattainable goals with inadequate tools. The miracle is that at times they accomplish this impossible task.”
– Haim Ginott

“I’ve always tried to be aware of what I say in my films, because all of us who make motion pictures are teachers–teachers with very loud voices.”
– George Lucas

“Do not forget, the reason opportunity is often missed is that it usually comes disguised as hard work.”
– Anonymous

“In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and highest responsibility anyone can have.”
– Lee Iacocca

“A teacher’s constant task is to take a roomful of live wires and see to it that they’re grounded.”
– E.C. McKenzie

“The ultimate reason for setting goals is to entice you to become the person it takes to achieve them.”

– Jim Rohn

“The vast accumulation of knowledge—or at least information…[has] been responsible for an equally vast ignorance. When there is so much to be known, when there are so many fields of knowledge in which the same words are used with different meanings, when every one knows a little about a great many things, it becomes increasingly difficult for anyone to know whether he knows what he is talking about or not. And when we do not know, or when we do not know enough, we tend always to substitute emotions for thoughts.”

– T.S. Eliot

“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.”

– Carl Jung

“A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search for truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.”
– Lewis Mumford

“All genuine learning is active, not passive. It involves the use of the mind, not just the memory. It is a process of discovery in which the student is the main agent, not the teacher.”
– Mortimer Adler

“No one ever attains very eminent success by simply doing what is required of him; it is the amount and excellence of what is over and above the required that determines the greatness of ultimate distinction.”
– Charles Kendall Adams

“Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.”
– Jordan Peterson

“All of life is the study of attention; where your attention goes, your life follows.”
– Jiddu Krishnamurti

“We must remember that we cannot insulate our children from the uncertainties of the world in which we live or from the impact of the problems which confront us all. What we can do and what we must do is to equip them to meet these problems, to do their part in the total effort, and to build up those inner resources of character which are the main strength of the American people.”
– Harry Truman

“They say the dead can’t speak, but they can!…They still send us messages—about love and courage and death! That’s what history is, and science, and art. That’s what literature is. It’s the people who went before us, tapping out messages from the past, from beyond the grave, trying to tell us about life and death! Listen to them!”
– Connie Willis

“I think there is no sense in forming an opinion when there is no evidence to form it on. If you build a person without any bones in him he may look fair enough to the eye, but he will be limber and cannot stand up; and I consider that evidence is the bones of an opinion.”

– Mark Twain

“People might dislike education, but everyone likes learning.”

– Seth Godin

“Our job as teachers is not to ‘prepare’ kids for something; our job is to help kids learn to prepare themselves for anything.”

– A.J. Juliani

“Attention is the rarest and purist form of generosity.”

– Simone Weil

“Order and simplification are the first steps toward the mastery of a subject.”

– Thomas Mann

” Learning is like rowing upstream; not to advance is to drop back.”
– Chinese Proverb

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”
– Benjamin Franklin

“If you haven’t failed in the classroom lately, you aren’t pushing the envelope far enough. ‘Safe’ lessons are a recipe for mediocrity at best.”
― Dave Burgess

“Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice…If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun.”
– C.S. Lewis, “Learning in Wartime”

“Learning makes a man fit company for himself.”
– English Proverb

“Circumstances don’t make the man; they reveal him to himself.”
– James Allen

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
– Victor Frankl

“Leadership is not about being the best. Leadership is about making everyone else better.”
– Anonymous

“An active mind is constantly in search of some truth which for it, at the moment, is the representation of that integral truth to which it has vowed its service. The intelligence is like a child, whose lips never cease their why.”
– A.G. Sertillanges

“In this age, telling the truth is tough business and not for the fainthearted.”

– Albert Mohler

“Humans are not wired to be constantly wired.”

– Cal Newport

“Until a person can say deeply and honestly, ‘I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday,’ that person cannot say, ‘I choose otherwise.’”

― Stephen R. Covey

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.”

― James Clear

“You don’t think your way into a new kind of living. You live your way into a new kind of thinking.”

― Henry Nouwen

“The Principle of Priority states (a) you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important, and (b) you must do what’s important first.”

― Steven Pressfield

“Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be.”

― Stephen R. Covey

“When the root is deep there is no reason to fear the wind.”

– Chinese Proverb

“He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions.”

– Samuel Johnson

“Great works do not always lie in our way, but every moment we may do little ones excellently, that is, with great love.”

– Francis de Sales

“Discipline is remembering what you want.”

– David Campbell

“A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.”

– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“A jeweled pivot on which our lives must turn is the deep realization that every person we meet in the course of a day is a dignified, essential human soul and that we are being guilty of gross inhumanity when we snub or abuse him.”

– Joshua Loth Liebman

“The words of the wise heard in quiet are better than the shouting of a ruler among fools.”

– Ecclesiastes 9:17

“The best teachers are those who show you were to look, but don’t tell you what to see.”

– Alexandra K. Trenfor

“Whatever God gives you to do, do it as well as you can. This is the best possible preparation for what he may want you to do next.”

– George MacDonald

“I like a teacher who gives you something to take hom to think about besides homework.”

– Lily Tomlin

“Men cannot improve a society by setting fire to it: they must seek out its old virtues and bring them back into the light.”

– Russell Kirk

“You cannot be all things to all students. But sometimes, just sometimes, you will be the right teacher at the right time. You will be the exact teacher that one child needed more than anything.”

– Paul F. C. Mundy

“The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.”

– Elizabeth Drew

“Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.”

– James 1:19

“If you read to read and not to have read, then your reading is serene, restful, and disinterested.”

– Bernardo Olivera

“There are many who seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge: that is curiosity.

There are others who desire to know in order that they may be known: that is vanity.

Others seek knowledge in order to sell it: that is dishonorable.

But there are some who seek knowledge in order to edify others: that is love.”

– Bernard of Clairvaux

“Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces and which most men throw away.”

– Charles Caleb Colton

“Great learning and superior abilities, should you ever possess them, will be of little value and small estimation, unless virtue, honor, truth integrity are added to them. Adhere to those religious sentiments and principles which were early instilled into your mind and remember that you are accountable to your Maker for all your words and actions.”

– Abigail Adams (to her 11-year-old son, John Quincy Adams)

“The essence of education is, in the words of William James, to teach a person what deserves to be valued, to impart ideals as well as knowledge, to cultivate in students the ability to distinguish the true and good from their counterfeits and the wisdom to prefer the former to the latter.”

– William J. Bennett

“The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities; and for this reason, the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head.”

– Noah Webster

“You can only find out what you actually believe (rather than what you think you believe) by watching how you act. You simply don’t know what you believe, before that. You are too complex to understand yourself.”

― Jordan B. Peterson

“Disagreement is not expressing one’s disapproval of something or expressing that something makes you feel bad or icky. To really disagree with someone’s idea or opinion, you must first understand that idea or opinion…You might take offense. You might feel bad that someone holds that view. But you are not reasoning unless you are engaging the merits of the argument.”

– Adam J. MacLeod

“I am tired of hearing about men with the ‘courage of their convictions.’ Nero and Caligula and Attila and Hitler had the courage of their convictions…But not one of them had the courage to examine their convictions or to change them, which is the true test of character.”

– Sydney J. Harris

“The best teachers love what they love, in front of those they love.”

– George Grant

“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain. ”

– John Adams

“The slightest knowledge of the greatest things is greater than the greatest knowledge of the slightest things.”

– Thomas Aquinas

“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.”

– Joseph Campbell

“The greatest problem with communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.”

– George Bernard Shaw

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”

– Noam Chomsky

“You will live with your mind for the rest of your life, so make it a good companion.”

– Marilynne Robinson (Quoting her high school English teacher)

“Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know.”

– Eric Hoffer

“I’ve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.”

– Haim Ginott

“Science is no more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain, and art is an interpretation of that miracle.”

– Ray Bradbury

“In the study of history…By entering into community with the past…we are simply reclaiming a truth that objectivism ignores: the community to which we belong extends far beyond the persons with whom we live daily; it extends backward into time.”
– Parker Palmer