This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
A book is the most delightful companion.. An inanimate thing, yet it talks... It stimulates your latent talents. There is in the world no friend more faithful and attentive, no teacher more proficient... It will join you in solitude, accompany you in exile, serve as a candle in the dark, and entertain you in you loneliness. It will do you good, and ask no favor in return. It gives, and does not take.
Friend | Good | Loneliness | Solitude | Will | World | Teacher |
Mortimer J. Adler, fully Mortimer Jerome Adler
The teacher does not produce knowledge in the mind; he merely helps the mind discover it for itself.
Everyone who remembers his own educational experience remembers teachers, not methods and techniques. The teacher is the kingpin of the educational situation. He makes or breaks programs.
Experience | Teacher |
Thomas Szasz, fully Thomas Stephen Szasz
A teacher should have maximal authority, and minimal power.
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
Reverence requires imagination and vital warmth; it requires least actual achievement or power. The child is weak and superficially foolish, the teacher is strong, and in an everyday sense wiser than the child. The teacher without reverence, or the bureaucrat without reverence, easily despises the child for these outward inferiorities.
Achievement | Imagination | Power | Reverence | Sense | Child | Teacher |
A teacher who tends to lower the self-esteem and confidence of his students should either change this tendency or change professions. One of the most important lessons an educator can convey to students is that they have inherent worth and should strive to utilize their potential.
Change | Confidence | Esteem | Important | Self | Self-esteem | Worth | Teacher |
Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, sometimes known as Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam
I have no patience with the stupidity of the average teacher of grammar who wastes precious years in hammering rules into children's heads. For it is not by learning rules that we acquire the powers of speaking a language, but by daily intercourse with those accustomed to express themselves with exactness and refinement and by copious reading of the best authors.
Children | Language | Learning | Patience | Reading | Refinement | Stupidity | Teacher |
"And now, Israel: What does the L-rd your G‑d ask of you? Only to fear G‑d" (Deuteronomy 10:12). Regarding this verse, the Talmud asks: "Is fear of G‑d a minor thing?" The answer given is, "Yes, for Moses it is a minor thing." At first glance, this answer is incomprehensible, since the verse says "What does G‑d ask of you" - i.e., every individual Jew! But the explanation is as follows: Each and every soul of the house of Israel contains within it something of the quality of our teacher Moses, for he is one of the "seven shepherds" who feed vitality and G‑dliness to the community of the souls of Israel.... Moses is the sum of them all, called the "shepherd of faith" (raaya meheimna) in the sense that he nourishes the community of Israel with the knowledge and recognition of G‑d... So although who is the man who dares presume in his heart to approach and attain even a thousandth part of the level of the faithful shepherd, nevertheless, an infinitesimal fringe and minute particle of his great goodness and light illuminates every Jew in each and every generation.
Fear | Heart | Individual | Knowledge | Light | Man | Sense | Soul | Teacher |
A poor surgeon hurts 1 person at a time. A poor teacher hurts thirty.
Teacher |
There is no accountability in the public school system - except for coaches. You know what happens to a losing coach. You fire him. A losing teacher can go on losing for 30 years and then go to glory.
Haim Ginott, fully Haim G. Ginott, orignially Ginzburg
A modern teacher educates children to value their emotions.
Haim Ginott, fully Haim G. Ginott, orignially Ginzburg
For children, learning is never without emotional overtones. Whenever a teacher ignores the emotions and resorts to logical explanations, learning limps to a halt.
Henry Adams, aka Henry Brooks Adams
A teacher affects eternity he can never tell, where his influence stops.