This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I wish to wrest education from the outworn order of doddering old teaching hacks as well as from the new-fangled order of cheap, artificial teaching tricks, and entrust it to the eternal powers of nature herself, to the light which God has kindled and kept alive in the hearts of fathers and mothers, to the interests of parents who desire their children grow up in favour with God and with men.
Children | Desire | Education | Eternal | God | Light | Nature | Order | Parents | God | Old |
Anne Sullivan, fully Johanna "Anne" Mansfield Macy
The processes of teaching the child that everything cannot be as he wills it are apt to be painful both to him and to his teacher.
Were all instructors to realize that the quality of mental process, not the production of correct answers, is the measure of educative growth something hardly less than a revolution in teaching would be worked.
Growth | Revolution |
Open-mindedness is not the same as empty-mindedness. To hang out a sign saying "Come right in; there is no one at home" is not the equivalent of hospitality. But there is a kind of passivity, willingness to let experiences accumulate and sink in and ripen, which is an essential of development. Results (external answers and solutions) may be hurried; processes may not be forced. They take their own time to mature. Were all instructors to realize that the quality of mental process, not the production of correct answers, is the measure of educative growth, something hardly less than a revolution in teaching would be worked.
Revolution | Right | Time |
John Steinbeck, fully John Ernst Steinbeck
I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.
John Whitmore, fully Sir John Whitmore
Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their own performance. It is helping them learn rather than teaching them.
Learn |
John Wooden, fully John Robert Wooden
I discovered early on that the player who learned the fundamentals of basketball is going to have a much better chance of succeeding and rising through the levels of competition than the player who was content to do things his own way. A player should be interested in learning why things are done a certain way. The reasons behind the teaching often go a long way to helping develop the skill.
Better | Chance | Competition | Learning |
Humanity is an unfinished task, and so is religion. The Law, the creed, the teaching and the wisdom are here, yet without the outburst of prophetic demands coming upon us again and again, religion may become fossilized.
John Wooden, fully John Robert Wooden
Profound responsibilities come with teaching and coaching. You can do so much good–or harm. It’s why I believe that next to parenting, teaching and coaching are the two most important professions in the world.
Joseph H. Hertz, fully Rabbi Joseph Herman Hertz
Life is a frail and transitory thing, but it has been given a higher purpose and dignity through the revelation of God's Teaching to Israel, and the resulting dedication of an entire people to God's service.
Dedication | Dignity | People | Purpose | Purpose | Revelation |
Judith Martin, née Perlman, pen name Miss Manners
The dinner table is the center for the teaching and practicing not just of table manners but of conversation, consideration, tolerance, family feeling, and just about all the other accomplishments of polite society except the minuet.
Knut Rockne, fully Knute Kenneth Rockne
One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than a hundred teaching it.
Harold Laski, fully Harold Joseph Laski
The business of a university is... teaching the student how facts are converted into the truth.
Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
The true meaning of Christ's teaching consists in the recognition of love as the supreme law of life, and therefore not admitting any exceptions.
Children belong in families, which, ideally, serve as a sanctuary and a cushion from the world at large. Parents belong to society and are a part of that greater world. Sometimes parents are a channel to the larger society, sometimes they are a shield from it. Ideally they act as filters, guiding their children and teaching them to avoid the tempting trash.
Ludwig Feuerbach, fully Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach
Christianity set itself the goal of fulfilling man’s unattainable desires, but for that very reason ignored his attainable desires. By promising man eternal life, it deprived him of temporal life, by teaching him to trust in God’s help it took away his trust in his own powers; by giving him faith in a better life in heaven, it destroyed his faith in a better life on earth and his striving to attain such a life. Christianity gave man what his imagination desires, but for that very reason failed to give him what he really and truly desires.
Better | Earth | Eternal | Faith | Giving | Imagination | Life | Life | Man | Reason | Trust |
Ludwig von Mises, fully Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises
The modern American high school, reformed according to the principles of John Dewey, has failed lamentably, as all competent experts agree, in the teaching of mathematics, physics, languages, and history.
Ludwig Feuerbach, fully Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach
I have always taken as the standard of the mode of teaching and writing, not the abstract, particular, professional philosopher, but universal man, that I have regarded man as the criterion of truth, and not this or that founder of a system, and have from the first placed the highest excellence of the philosopher in this, that he abstains, both as a man and as an author, from the ostentation of philosophy, i.e., that he is a philosopher only in reality, not formally, that he is a quiet philosopher, not a loud and still less a brawling one.
Excellence | Man | Ostentation | Quiet | Excellence |
Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
When I have a difficult subject before me — when I find the road narrow, and can see no other way of teaching a well established truth except by pleasing one intelligent man and displeasing ten thousand fools — I prefer to address myself to the one man, and to take no notice whatever of the condemnation of the multitude; I prefer to extricate that intelligent man from his embarrassment and show him the cause of his perplexity, so that he may attain perfection and be at peace.
Cause | Man | Perfection | Truth |