This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The time and study, the genius, knowledge, and application requisite to qualify an eminent teacher of the sciences, are at least equal to what is necessary for the greatest practitioners in law and physic. But the usual reward of the eminent teacher bears no proportion to that of the lawyer or physician... The inequality is upon the whole, perhaps, rather advantageous than hurtful to the public. It may somewhat degrade the profession of a public teacher; but the cheapness of literary education is surely an advantage which greatly overbalances this trifling inconveniency." - Adam Smith
"A true teacher encourages students to find God within themselves, and does not foster clinging or dependence on the physical form... The only goal of a true teacher is the advancement of the students and the celebration of Truth. Selfish or personal motivations are absent." - Alan Cohen
"By the time I got to school, I had already read a couple hundred books. I knew in the first grade that they were lying to me because I had already been exposed to other points of view. School is basically about one point of view -- the one the teacher has or the textbooks have. They don't like the idea of having different points of view, so it was a battle. Of course I would pipe up with my five-year-old voice." - Alan Curtis Kay
"The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence... He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him." - Amos Bronson Alcott
"The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence." - Amos Bronson Alcott
"Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual." - Arthur Koestler
"Creative activity described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual." - Arthur Koestler
"Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual." - Arthur Koestler
"Instead of developing the child’s own faculties of discernment, and teaching it to judge and think for itself, the teacher uses all his energies to stuff its head full of the ready-made thoughts of other people." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"Affliction appears to be the guide to reflection; the teacher of humility; the parent of repentance; the nurse of faith; the strengthener of patience, and the promoter of charity." - Author Unknown NULL
"If the student fails to learn the teacher fails to teach." - Author Unknown NULL
"If you can read this, thank a teacher." - Author Unknown NULL
"A real teacher can never run dry because he continually learns from each and every experience, not filled with likes and dislikes, bur desire through learning to evolute whatever he touches. A correct teacher of Yoga is not one who discusses it, but who is it." - Blanche DeVries Bernard
"The teacher must step back and review each day as a student, always feeling that there is more and more to learn, love appreciate. -- Be in this world, but not of it... Everything comes back on the Universal clock of time... everything. Memorize the aphorism that irrelevancy of circumstance is the highest wisdom of life... Your 'balance' is your ammunition; one should not fire it, but rather maintain it." - Blanche DeVries Bernard
"If a man keeps cherishing his old knowledge, so as continually to be acquiring new, he may be a teacher of others." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"The teacher is one who makes two ideas grow where only one grew before." - Elbert Green Hubbard
"The teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on the wrong iron." - Horace Mann
"A teacher should, above all things, first induce a desire in the pupil for the acquisition he wishes to impart." - Horace Mann
"A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron." - Horace Mann
"Whoever would be a teacher of men let him begin by teaching himself before teaching others; and let him teach by example before teaching by word. For he who teaches himself and rectifies his own ways is more deserving of respect and reverence than he who would teach others and rectify their ways." - Kahlil Gibran
"The remembrance of the past is the teacher of the future." - Kaibara Ekken, or Ekiken, also known as Atsunobu NULL
"The teacher is a sculptor of the intangible future. There is no more dangerous occupation on the planet, for what we conceive as our masterpiece may appear out of time to mock us - a horrible caricature of ourselves... We, too, like the generation before us, are the cracked, the battered, the malformed products of remoter chisels shaping the most obstinate substance in the universe; the substance of man." - Loren Eiseley
"The teacher is often the first to discover the talented and unusual scholar. How he handles and encourages, or discourages, such a child may make all the difference in the world to that child's future - and to the world." - Loren Eiseley
"Fear is not a lasting teacher of duty." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"In the end, as any successful teacher will tell you, you can only teach the things that you are. If we practice racism then it is racism that we teach." - Max Lerner, fully Maxwell "Max" Alan Lerner, aka Mikhail Lerner
"Experience is a good teacher but she runs up big bills." - Minna Thomas Antrim
"The teacher does not produce knowledge in the mind; he merely helps the mind discover it for itself." - Mortimer J. Adler, fully Mortimer Jerome Adler
"The teacher is like the farmer or the physician. The farmer doesn’t produce the grains of the field; he merely helps them grow. The physician does not produce the health of the body; he merely helps the body maintain its health or regain its health. And the teacher does not produce knowledge in the mind; he merely helps the mind discover it for itself." - Mortimer J. Adler, fully Mortimer Jerome Adler
"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." - Moses ibn Ezra, fully Rabbi Moses ben Jacob ibn Ezra, known as ha-Sallah "Writer of penitential prayers"
"Time is the teacher most sublime." - Moses ibn Ezra, fully Rabbi Moses ben Jacob ibn Ezra, known as ha-Sallah "Writer of penitential prayers"
"The best teacher is not necessarily the one who possesses the most knowledge but the one who most effectively enables his students to believe in their ability to learn." - Norman Cousins
"A good teacher feels his way, looking for response." - Paul Goodman
"A true teacher is always at home in the depths of the Self. He never sees a difference between himself and others, is never moved by false ideas or distinctions (for example, the idea tht he himself is an enlightened sage, that he has realized the truth and attained freedom, while the others around him pine away in bondage and ignorance). His courage and self-control are at times unshakable. No experience that he encounters can lead him astray." -
"I am not a teacher, but an awakener." - Robert Frost
"Schools teach you to imitate. If you don't imitate what the teacher wants you get a bad grade. Here, in college, it was more sophisticated, of course; you were supposed to imitate the teacher in such a way as to convince the teacher you were not imitating, but taking the essence of the instruction and going ahead with it on your own. That got you A's. Originality on the other hand could get you anything -- from A to F. The whole grading system cautioned against it." -
"He who makes himself his own teacher, makes himself pupil to a fool." - Saint Bernard of Clairvaux NULL
"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." - Sidney Hook
"The best preacher is the heart; the best teacher is time; the best book is the world; the best friend is God." - Talmud or The Talmud NULL
"A teacher should have maximal authority, and minimal power." - Thomas Szasz, fully Thomas Stephen Szasz
"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." - Zelig Pliskin
"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. " - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"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. " - Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, sometimes known as Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam
""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." - Shneur Zalman of Liadi
"A poor surgeon hurts 1 person at a time. A poor teacher hurts thirty. " - Ernest Leroy Boyer
"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." - Henry Ross Perot
"A modern teacher educates children to value their emotions." - Haim Ginott, fully Haim G. Ginott, orignially Ginzburg