This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There is no human reason why a child should not admire and emulate his teacher's ability to do sums, rather than the village bum's ability to whittle sticks and smoke cigarettes. The reason why the child does not is plain enough - the bum has put himself on an equality with him and the teacher has not.
Ability | Enough | Equality | Reason | Wisdom | Child | Teacher |
Go to the place where the thing you wish to know is native; your best teacher is there. Where the thing you wish to know is so dominant that you must breathe its very atmosphere, there teaching is most thorough, and learning is most easy. You acquire a language most readily in the country where it is spoken; you study mineralogy best among miners; and so with everything else.
If a child who wanted to be a teacher I would bid him Godspeed as if he were going to war. For indeed the war against prejudice, greed and ignorance is eternal, and those who dedicate themselves to it give their lives not less because they may live to see some faction of the battle won.
Battle | Eternal | Greed | Ignorance | Prejudice | War | Wisdom | Child | Teacher |
Vern Law, fully Vernon Sanders Law
Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson after.
Experience | Lesson | Wisdom | Teacher |
Livy, formally Titus Livius, aka Titus Livy NULL
Experience is the teacher of fools.
Experience | Wisdom | Teacher |
In my life of professional teaching, I have never endeavored to make young men more efficient; I have tried to make them more interesting. If one is interested, one is usually interesting. The business of a teacher is not to supply information, it is to raise a thirst. I like to hang pictures on the walls of the mind, I like to make it possible for a man to live with himself, so that he will not be bored with himself. For my own part, I live everyday as if this were the first day I had ever seen and the last I were going to see.
Business | Day | Life | Life | Man | Men | Mind | Will | Wisdom | Business | Teacher |
The teacher is like the candle which lights others in consuming itself.
A boy who suffers not at the hands of his teacher suffers at the hand of Time.
A true teacher should penetrate to whatever is vital in his pupil, and develop that by the light and heat of his own intelligence.
Intelligence | Light | Wisdom | Teacher |
Curiosity is as much the parent of attention as attention is of memory; therefore the first business of a teacher - first not only in point of time, but of importance - should be to excite not merely a general curiosity on the subject of the study, but a particular curiosity on particular points in that subject. To teach one who has no curiosity to learn is to sow a field without ploughing it.
Attention | Business | Curiosity | Memory | Study | Teach | Time | Wisdom | Business | Learn | Parent | Teacher |