Education Quotes for Teachers and Students

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Whether you’re a teacher or a student, a new school year is an exciting time. These education quotes will get you ready to enjoy teaching and learning anytime.

School pushes us out of our comfort zone, teaches us to dream big, and encourages us to achieve our potential.

In celebration of all the amazing things that education, we’ve put together a list of the best quotes about school, learning, and teaching.

So whether you’re a parent, student, or teacher – we’ve got you covered as you get ready for another year of school.

Top 10 Education Quotes

Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.

Socrates

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

Nelson Mandela
Will Durant quote "Education is the transmission of civilization"
“Education is the transmission of civilization.” – Will Durant

Education is the key to unlocking the world, a passport to freedom.

Oprah Winfrey

Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.

John Dewey

Education brings about opportunity, and in turn inspiration.

Bill Frist

The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.

Herbert Spencer
Georg Hegel quote "Education is the art of making man ethical"
“Education is the art of making man ethical.” – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

Aristotle

Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.

Edward Everett 

Quotes about Education

Whether you’re at the beginning of a new year or semester of learning, or aren’t quite sure where your knowledge will take you next – look no further than these inspiring education quotes.

Education is the methodical creation of the habit of thinking.

Ernest Dimnet

Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.

Malcolm Forbes

Only the educated are free.

Epictetus

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Wendell Willkie quote "Education is the mother of leadership"
“Education is the mother of leadership.” – Wendell Willkie

Education is teaching our children to desire the right things.

Plato

It is clearly absurd to limit the term ‘education’ to a person’s formal schooling.

Murray N. Rothbard

Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.

Malcolm X

All the world is a laboratory to the inquiring mind.

Martin Fisher

Education is not just about going to school and getting a degree. It’s about widening your knowledge and absorbing the truth about life.

Shakuntala Devi

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.

Stephen Hawking

Don’t just teach your children to read. Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything.

George Carlin

Even the genius asks questions.

Tupac Shakur

The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.

Carl Rogers
Anatole France quote "Nine-tenths of education is encouragement"
“Nine-tenths of education is encouragement.” – Anatole France

Knowing is not enough; We must apply. Willing is not enough; We must do.

Bruce Lee

Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.

C.S. Lewis

Any fool can know. The point is to understand.

Albert Einstein

Development is a series of rebirths.

Maria Montessori

What you think, you become. What you feel, you attract. What you imagine, you create.

Buddha

Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.

Kofi Annan

A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.

Mark Twain
"Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance"
“Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.” – Will Durant

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

Albert Einstein

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

W.B. Yeats

Education costs money. But then so does ignorance.

Sir Claus Moser

Upon the subject of education … I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people may be engaged in.

Abraham Lincoln

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.

Robert Frost

Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.

Aristotle

They cannot stop me. I will get my education, if it is in the home, school, or anyplace.

Malala Yousafzai

To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil’s soul.

Muriel Spark
Mark Twain education quote "Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned"
“Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.” – Mark Twain

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

Marian Wright Edelman

The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.

Sydney J. Harris

Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.

Jim Rohn

Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom.

George Washington Carver

Education is not just about going to school and getting a degree. It’s about widening your knowledge and absorbing the truth about life.

Shakuntala Devi

A well-educated mind will always have more questions than answers.

Helen Keller

Learning Quotes

Live as if you will die tomorrow. Learn as if you will live forever.

Mahatma Gandhi

The learning process continues until the day you die.

Kirk Douglas
Leonardo da Vinci quote "Learning never exhausts the mind"
“Learning never exhausts the mind.” – Leonardo da Vinci

The doer alone learneth.

Friedrich Nietzsche

I don’t think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

Abraham Lincoln

Anything worth doing well is worth doing poorly at first.

Ray Congdon

It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are.

Wendell Berry

The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.

Voltaire

Learning is not compulsory. Neither is survival.

Dr. W. Edwards Deming

Yesterday I was clever, so I changed the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.

Rumi

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go!

Dr. Seuss
Alexander Pope education quote "A little learning is a dangerous thing"
“A little learning is a dangerous thing.” – Alexander Pope

Being a student is easy. Learning requires actual work.

William Crawford

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

Mark Twain

Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.

Chinese Proverb

The beautiful thing about learning is that nobody can take it away from you.

B.B. King

Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.

Abigail Adams

We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.

Lloyd Alexander

Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to close it again on something solid.

G.K. Chesterton
Henry Adams education quote "They know enough who know how to learn"
“They know enough who know how to learn.” – Henry Adams

Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.

Benjamin Franklin

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty.

Henry Ford

Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one’s self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily.

Thomas Szasz

Change is the end result of all true learning.

Leo Buscaglia

It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.

Harry S. Truman

It is what we know already that often prevents us from learning.

Claude Bernard

Always walk through life as if you have something new to learn and you will.

Vernon Howard
Plato education quote "All learning has an emotional base"
“All learning has an emotional base.” – Plato

Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.

Benjamin Franklin

A plant needs roots in order to grow. With man it is the other way around: only when he grows does he have roots and feels at home in the world.

Eric Hoffer

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

Confucius

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.

Benjamin Franklin

Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow.

Anthony J. D’Angelo

Man can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown.

Claude Bernard

Be curious, not judgmental.

Walt Whitman
"You aren’t learning anything when you’re talking"
“You aren’t learning anything when you’re talking.” – Lyndon B. Johnson

Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.

Abigail Adams

I’m still learning.

Michelangelo

The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.

Michel Legrand

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.

Aristotle

Do these learning quotes have you ready for more knowledge? See our list of 8 Essential Books for Graduate Students and keep learning at the highest level.

School Quotes

A new desk, a handful of freshly sharpened pencils, the first page of a new workbook… there are no days quite like school days!

From Kindergarten to college, celebrate all stages of education and their role in shaping our futures with these great school quotes.

In school, you’re taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you’re given a test that teaches you a lesson.

Tom Bodett

The pathway to educational excellence lies within each school.

Terrance Deal

We don’t stop going to school when we graduate.

Carol Burnett

If the school sends out children with a desire for knowledge and some idea of how to acquire and use it, it will have done its work.

Richard Livingstone
"A child educated only at school is an uneducated child"
“A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.” – George Santayana

What a school thinks about its library is a measure of what it feels about education.

Harold Howe

School made us ‘literate’ but did not teach us to read for pleasure.

Ambeth Ocampo

Instruction does much, but encouragement everything.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.

E.M. Forster

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.

Benjamin Franklin

In school we learn that mistakes are bad, and we are punished for making them. Yet, if you look at the way humans are designed to learn, we learn by making mistakes. We learn to walk by falling down. If we never fell down, we would never walk.

Robert T. Kiosaki

The human mind is our fundamental resource.

John F. Kennedy

Children want the same things we want. To laugh, to be challenged, to be entertained, and delighted.

Dr. Seuss
"The fundamental purpose of school is learning, not teaching"
“The fundamental purpose of school is learning, not teaching.” – Richard DuFour

What makes a child gifted and talented may not always be good grades in school, but a different way of looking at the world and learning.

Chuck Grassley

Expecting all children the same age to learn from the same materials is like expecting all children the same age to wear the same size clothing.

Madeline Hunter

It is as impossible to withhold education from the receptive mind as it is impossible to force it upon the unreasoning.

Agnes Repplierg

Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new.

Og Mandino

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

Mark Twain

School is a place that provides education, and education is the key to life.

Unknown

When you take the free will out of education, that turns it into schooling.

John Taylor Gatto

I’m not going to school just for the academics – I wanted to share ideas, to be around people who are passionate about learning.

Emma Watson
Edward de Bono quote "I think school is a place where thinking should be taught"
“I think school is a place where thinking should be taught.” – Edward de Bono

School prepares you for the real world… which also bites.

Jim Benton

There’s no use going to school unless your final destination is the library.

Ray Bradbury

The chief reason for going to school is to get the impression fixed for life that there is a book for everything.

Robert Frost

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

George Evans

They spent the first three years of school getting you to pretend stuff and then the rest of it marking you down if you did the same thing.Margaret Atwood

Let the improvement of yourself keep you so busy that you have no time to criticize others.

Roy T. Bennett

Being a student is easy. Learning requires actual work.

William Crawford

The ideal school would teach health, wealth, and happiness. It‘d be free, self-paced, and available to all. It‘d show opposing ideas and students would self-verify truth. No grades, no tests, no diplomas – just learning. Actually, you’re already here. Careful who you follow.

Naval Ravikant
Victor Hugo school quote "He who opens a school door closes a prison"
“He who opens a school door, closes a prison.” – Victor Hugo

I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.

Stanley Kubrick

The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Education would 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

You can’t learn in school what the world is going to do next year.

Henry Ford

Cheating in school is a form of self-deception. We go to school to learn. We cheat ourselves when we coast on the efforts and scholarship of someone else.

James E. Faust

You must get an education. You must go to school, and you must learn to protect yourself. And you must learn to protect yourself with the pen, and not the gun.

Josephine Baker

Education begins at home. You can’t blame the school for not putting into your child what you don’t put into him.

Geoffrey Holder

Teaching Quotes

Teachers have the amazing power of being able to inspire young minds.

Celebrate those who help children and young people achieve their potential with these quotes about teachers and teaching.

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.

William Arthur Ward
"Children must be taught how to think not what to think"
“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” – Margaret Mead

I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.

Lily Tomlin

Teaching is a very noble profession that shapes the character, caliber, and future of an individual. If the people remember me as a good teacher, that will be the biggest honor for me.

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

A word of encouragement from a teacher to a child can change a life. A word of encouragement from a spouse can save a marriage. A word of encouragement from a leader can inspire a person to reach her potential.

John C. Maxwell

Let us remember: One book, one pen, one child and one teacher can change the world.

Malala Yousafzai

A good teacher, like a good entertainer first must hold his audience’s attention, then he can teach his lesson.

John Henrik Clarke

The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.

Cicero

The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.

C.S. Lewis

Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.

Jacques Barzun

A teacher who loves learning earns the right and the ability to help others learn.

Ruth Beechick
Richard Bach teaching quote "You teach best what you most need to learn"
“You teach best what you most need to learn.” – Richard Bach

Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners.

John Holt

I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.

Alexander the Great

Proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you have always known.

Frank Herbert

The best teachers are those who show you where to look but don’t tell you what to see.

Alexandra K. Trenfor

Education is too important to be left solely to educators.

Francis Keppel

If we want our children to value education, then we must show our appreciation for knowledge.

Brad Sherman

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

Joseph Campbell

Education is the key to success in life, and teachers make a lasting impact in the lives of their students.

Solomon Ortiz

A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.

Thomas Carruthers
Thomas Lodge quote "Men, in teaching others learn themselves"
“Men, in teaching others, learn themselves.” – Thomas Lodge

We hope you’re feeling inspired and excited to go back to school!

Enjoy these education quotes and quotes on teaching and learning anytime you need some extra schooling for your mind. Let us know your favorite below!

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Natalie Seale

Natalie Seale is a writer and researcher with an MA, MSc, and PhD in History from the University of Edinburgh. Natalie is an avid reader, a keen traveller, and enjoys cooking and walking with her English Spaniel. Her posts focus on inspiring ideas and tips that help people learn, gro, and inspire others.

1 thought on “Education Quotes for Teachers and Students”

  1. This is the best quote for education The quote which i love in this list is “Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.”

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