Educator Quotes

A person ignorant of Botany, on beholding the profusion of flowers which adorn the face of nature, would discover general resemblances, and form in his mind some order of arrangement; but the Botanist learns to distinguish the least conspicuous parts of a plant as most important in a system of classification.

A teacher in a differentiated classroom does not classify herself as someone who 'already differentiates instruction.' Rather that teacher is fully aware that every hour of teaching, every day in the classroom can reveal one more way to make the classroom a better match for its learners.

You can eliminate depression without making someone happy. You can cure anxiety without teaching someone optimism. You can return someone to work without improving their job performance. If all you strive for is diminishing the bad, you'll only attain the average and you'll miss out entirely on the opportunity to exceed the average.

Teaching is mostly listening, and learning is mostly telling.

A cardinal principle in systems theory is that all parties that have a stake in a system should be represented in its management.

Wise and purposeful letting alone is the best part of education.

Charlotte Mason
Charlotte Mason
The student is to collect and evaluate facts. The facts are locked up in the patient.

Abraham Flexner
Abraham Flexner
Until you value yourself, you can't expect anyone else to do so.

Biology is often described as the most recent of the sciences, despite the fact that it was one of the first to be studied.

Herbert William Conn
Herbert William Conn
I'm much better at working out ideas in action than I am in theorizing about it and then transferring my thinking to action. I don't work that way. I work with tentative ideas and I experiment and then with that experimentation in action, I finally come to the conclusions about what I think is the right way to do it.

Nervous exhaustion from mental overwork is most often due to neglect of this rule and the brain worker should limit his regular day's work to a reasonable number of hours per day and those when the brain is at its best.

The virtues which keep this world sweet and the faithfulness which keeps it steadfast are chiefly those of the average man. The danger of the two-talent man is that he will be content with mediocrity.

When a smile touches our hearts. When the forest stills us to peace. When music moves us to rapture. When we really love, laugh or dance with joy. We are at one with the Angels.

Other things being equal, it is the person who can lift his work up to the plane of the intuitional and inspiration who achieves greatness, both in his work and in his career.

A tale is told of a man in Paris during the upheaval in 1948, who saw a friend marching after a crowd toward the barricades. Warning him that these could not be held against the troops, that he had better keep way, he received this reply, " I must follow them. I am their leader."

Abbott Lawrence Lowell
Abbott Lawrence Lowell
No-one can say just how long a message should be, but you rarely hear complaints about a speech being too short. The amateur worries about what he is going to put into his speech. The expert worries about what he should take out. An artisitic performance is concentrated, has a central focus.

The secret of a lucid analysis is, like that of untangling a snarl of yarn, viz: to get hold of the right end of the thread.

THE POWER OF THE GROUP We all want to feel a sense of belonging. This isn't a character flaw. It's fundamental to the human experience. Our finest achievements are possible when people come together to work for a common cause. School spirit, the rightful pride we feel in our community, our heritage, our religion, and our families, all come from the value we place on belonging to a group.

Rosalind Wiseman
Rosalind Wiseman
Don't be afraid to write crap - it makes the best fertilizer. The more you write the better your chances of growing something wonderful.

Teach your children to listen carefully and to speak thoughtfully. The best way to teach this is to listen carefully and speak thoughtfully to your children, from the time they are babies. Take their questions and ideas seriously... learning to speak and listen as if our words matter is fundamental to education. Dialogue is not the same as mindless chatter. Above all, listen, listen, and listen to your kids.

Poverty is mean and degrading to the human spirit, whereas a life of conscious simplicity can have both a beauty and a functional integrity that elevates the human spirit.

One of the greatest gifts a caring teacher can contribute to children is to help them learn to sit when they feel like running, to raise their hand when they feel like talking, to be polite to their neighbor, to stand in line without pushing, and to do their homework when they feel like playing. By introducing procedures in the classroom, you are also introducing procedures as a way of living a happy and successful life.

When I consider my ministry, I think of the world. Anything less than that would not be worthy of Christ, nor of his will for my life,

Whatever I do today is the whole continuum of my experience. Like John Dewey said in his book 'Art as Experience,' you can't separate experience from the work of art. So, if I write for the symphony today, you're listening to everything that's happened to me since I was 18 years old.

Yusef Lateef
Yusef Lateef
When the masses become better informed about science, they will feel less need for help from supernatural Higher Powers. The need for religion will end when man becomes sensible enough to govern himself.

Francisco Ferrer Guardia
Francisco Ferrer Guardia