Quotes for Education

I'm a sucker for a good quote! Following are a few of my favorites that inspire me as an educator.

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

Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you're in love, you want to tell the world. –Carl Sagan

“As we confuse higher standards with greater regimentation we compromise the very essence of our discipline.” – Flávia Bastos

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. –Albert Einstein

A culture populated by a people whose imagination is impoverished has a static future. In such a culture there will be little change because there will be little sense of possibility. –Elliot Eisner, The Arts and the Creation of Mind

Why do they treat us like children? they said & I said why do you treat them like adults? & their eyes opened wide & they began to laugh & talk all at once & suddenly everything looked possible again. –Brian Andreas, Trusted Soul: Collected Stories & Drawings

Struggle is an inevitable aspect of learning; we educators do not have to invent struggles for our students, and students who are generally happy with their studies are better able to bring meaning to difficult periods and get through them with some satisfaction. –Nel Noddings, Happiness and Education

I once mentioned to my wife that I wished I could play the saxophone as she does. She turned to me laughing and said, ‘Apparently not bad enough to learn how.’ She was absolutely correct. –Kevin Purcell, triathlete and coach

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. –Thomas Edison

For those who want no change the arts and the imagination can cause trouble. –Elliot Eisner, The Arts and the Creation of Mind

Courage is not the absence of fear but the judgment that something else is more important than fear. The brave may not live forever but the cautious do not live at all. –Meg Cabot, “The Princess Diaries”

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the women and men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. –Antoine de Saint-Exupery

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

–T.S. Eliot (from Little Gidding)