Best Teacher Quotes to Inspire, Uplift & Motivate You Every Day

“I just want people to understand that regardless of what it is that you do - whether you're a teacher, whether you are a doctor, a single mother, a college student, a big sister - that you have strength within you, and I want people to be inspired to walk in their own superhero regardless of what it is that they do.”

“The best teacher is an audience. The ideal performance is when that group of strangers sitting in the dark gets energy from the group in the light and sends energy back to us. When it really works, a perfect circle is formed.”

“I've never considered myself a celebrity or even part of the entertainment business. I'm a cooking teacher.”

“I do respond well to a director, a teacher - someone who doesn't accept mediocrity.”

“It was in the early 1960s that my late revered teacher, Professor Abraham Joshua Heschel, became the first major Jewish theologian in America to enter into dialogue with Christian theologians on a high theological level.”

“I do my schooling through an independent study program where I am able to do all my work at home, and then every two weeks, I meet with my teacher and turn in my work. When I am on set, I work with a studio teacher, and we do a mandatory three hours of school a day.”

“I do readings at the public library. I just did a benefit scene night for my old acting teacher.”

“I thought I'd grow up to be a teacher, or maybe run for political office.”

“Shahid is a paternal figure to me. He's almost like a teacher. All my life, I've learned so much by watching him. I can't possibly consider him as competition to me. In fact, I would say, we're a team.”

“All I wanted to be was a teacher and perhaps give dance recitals from time to time.”

“My brother is a policeman; my sister's an English teacher. When I hear what they make versus what I make, it's ridiculous.”

“My father drove a truck, and my mother was a school teacher. They wanted their children to go the traditional route: get good grades, go to college, get a job.”

“I was born in the small town of Gorizia, Italy, on 31 March, 1934. My father was an electrical engineer at the local telephone company and my mother an elementary school teacher.”

“Growing up in Highland Park, in high school, I had some very influential teachers: I had a math teacher who taught calculus that helped me learn to be in love with mathematics; I had a chemistry teacher who inspired us to work what was in the class and to go beyond.”

“I learned so much about love from the movies. For a couple of hours, I would allow myself to dream about love and a life that, for me, ordinarily, felt out of reach. So, it was with deep gratitude that I watched the drama 'Call Me by Your Name,' knowing what a beautiful teacher it would be for boys like me.”

“My mother had been a Latin teacher, and she was always very fascinated with words. She and I shared books and responded to them.”

“I was never any good in the school theatrical productions. I always got a role like the March Hare. A Latin teacher told me I might make a good actress, and that stuck in my memory.”

“We lived in the schoolhouse of the village school in Church Preen, in deepest Shropshire, and my mum was the schoolmistress. She taught the juniors, and one other teacher taught the infants. I went there from the age of three, no doubt as a form of childcare.”

“I remember one time in my junior year, in my art class, our teacher had us doing, like, finger paints, and I went and put a stripe on a girl's shirt, and it turned into a big paint fight. Paint all over the walls, all over everybody. It was pretty fun.”

“History is my biggest teacher.”

“There is no better teacher than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.”

“I had a Spanish teacher in high school. I rarely got in trouble in her room because I felt I was disappointing her if I got a bad grade. That had more power over me than teachers who told me I talked too much. That level of respect I had for her made me not want to fail for her.”

“I have a half an hour warm-up I do that my voice teacher gave me. I exercise at least for an hour during the day. I don't have any superstitious rituals or anything like that.”

“I've been drawing since about age 5. In kindergarten I drew a picture of my teacher and she loved it! Made a big fuss over me. That's when I realized that, if I drew cool pictures, I could get attention from adults. From that point on I was an attention freak!”

“As a coach, you're like a teacher. You don't give the players their talent. God gives them talent, but you can give them knowledge, and you can give them information.”

“A lot of my activity in the theatre, and even in writing poems, was a kind of retrospective aggro on the English teacher who wouldn't allow me to read poetry aloud.”

“I feel like every teacher out there has a teacher that impacted them in their life.”

“My mom was a history teacher, so I couldn't really avoid history when I was growing up. But we're very light on American history. We don't really have great opportunities to study both the Civil War and the Revolution.”

“Right from growing up I always wanted to be a teacher, but my dad discouraged me.”

“Found out I'm actually a pretty good teacher.”

“I wanted to become a teacher, like my mother, or a charity worker. But my mom says that when I was younger, I told her, 'People are going to know me,' so I guess I always had that idea.”

“I don't really consider myself a teacher. I think - like, I have opinions like everyone else, and I just share my opinions.”

“We weren't wealthy but we weren't poor either. My mum was a teacher and my dad, Chris, was an England international cricketer. We were always taught respect when it came to money, and that stands me in good stead now. I've always respected my parents, and still look to them for advice when I need it.”

“When I was a teacher, I'd walk into the classroom. I stood at the board. I was the man. I directed operations. I was an intellectual and artistic and moral traffic cop, and I - and I would direct the class, most of the time.”

“The Holy Spirit is our comforter, our teacher. That's why, in prayer, we can ask the Lord to open up Scripture and make it come alive to us, to open our understanding. He left his Spirit with us until we join him in Heaven.”

“Well, any teacher or coach derives his greatest pleasure in their profession or their process when they see their pupil succeed, so I would say I definitely enjoy that part of the game.”

“In middle school, I had the best math teacher I've ever had, and he was deaf... and I felt inspired by him. I knew from then on that I wanted to be a math teacher.”

“I think for me I was in kindergarten, so I was very young and my teacher acknowledged that I was very dyslexic when it came to reading and writing and processing that information.”

“Cultural dominance of middle-class norms prevail in middle-class schools with a teacher teaching toward those standards and with students striving to maintain those standards.”

“I can remember exactly where I sat when my teacher first read Roald Dahl's 'James and the Giant Peach'.”

“You know, if you're a human and living on the planet, it doesn't matter what you do; you are not immune to the challenges, the trials, the difficulty. And that fact that I happen to be a coach and a minister and a spiritual teacher doesn't mean anything. I'm still human.”

“What it takes is to actually write: not to think about it, not to imagine it, not to talk about it, but to actually want to sit down and write. I'm lucky I learned that habit a really long time ago. I credit my mother with that. She was an English teacher, but she was a writer.”

“The first programming assignment I had in high school was to find the first 100 Fibonacci numbers. Instead, I thought it would be cooler to write a program to get the teacher's password and all the other students' passwords. And the teacher gave me an A and told the class how smart I was.”

“I love yoga. I'll film a class with my teacher, bring my mat with me, and just do it anywhere.”

“No matter how many great things you say about Jacques Pepin, there's always more. Through his books and videos, he taught me the importance of technique in the kitchen, but, more significantly, he showed me what it means to be a great teacher and educator.”

“About 13-14 years ago, I went back to my alma mater, Fairfax High School, and ran into the music teacher. She invited me to come speak to the kids about the viability of a music career. When I went into the room where I used to play every day in a big orchestra, they had nothing!”

“To be successful in anything, you have to have a passion for it, and that leads to being enthusiastic and demanding. I didn't have it for history. So I wouldn't have been a good teacher in that area. But I had it for basketball. And that's what coaching is at every level: it's about teaching.”

“I'd never been a teacher before, and here I was starting my first day with these eager students. There was a shortage of teachers, and they had been without a math teacher for six months. They were so excited to learn math.”

“When I started out back in Louisville, there was Harry Collins. He was my first teacher. He saw that I was so obsessed with magic that he taught me the love of magic.”

“I do remember a teacher telling me when I was about ten that I was really good at acting. I was so proud, even though I am sure he said that to all of us in the class.”

“Golf is about knowledge, and studying another player - more than listening to a teacher - is the best way to get it.”

“What is it in you that brings you to a spiritual teacher in the first place? It's not the spirit in you, since that is already enlightened, and has no need to seek. No, it is the ego in you that brings you to a teacher.”

“As a master of graphic creation, as teacher, historian, and roving ambassador of comics, Jerry Robinson has ensured that future generations of talented kids will continue to imagine and then put marks on paper.”

“My grandmother bought me a set of Encyclopedia Britannica's when I was little, and I remember sitting on the floor reading through these just dreaming of all the possibilities. My mind would always go toward me becoming a nurse or a teacher because, even back then, I knew I wanted to do my part to make the world a richer place.”

“There was an email forwarded to me from a first-grade teacher, and she said she was teaching them civil rights for MLK weekend, and a little first-grader stood up, and he said, 'I can explain segregation,' and proceeded to explain all the scenes from 'Hidden Figures.' And I died because that's everything.”

“I had a voice - I had an instrument - I loved singing and I had an inspired singing teacher, Miss Sleigh. I went to her every Saturday, and I now possess the upright Steinway piano beside which I used to stand in fear and trembling if I hadn't done my breathing exercises.”

“My second-grade teacher went around the class and asked everybody what they were going to be when they grew up. I said, 'I want to travel the world,' and he said, 'You'll be married and pregnant by 21, just like all the girls in this room.'”

“We must use the wrath of nature as our teacher.”

“The first crush of my life was my teacher. I was in 5th grade and she used to teach me maths. She was really hot.”

“As an actor and as a performer, I've felt that the education system has really helped me in a lot of ways... there was always a teacher or a professor along the way that kept pushing me to the next stage.”

“I did tell my kindergarten teacher I would go to space someday, and she said she'd be watching.”

“Because I was writing verse, my instructor suggested I study Shakespeare. The Shakespeare teacher insisted you couldn't understand the text without seeing it on its feet.”

“It's a dream of mine to be a yoga teacher one day.”

“For every R. Kelly or Bill Cosby or Harvey Weinstein, there's, you know, the owner of the grocery store, the coach, the teacher, the neighbor, who are doing the same things. But we don't pay attention until it's a big name. And we don't pay attention 'til it's a big celebrity.”

“Coach Dyer was a great mentor for me and a great teacher.”

“I grew up hearing that if it hadn't been for Ataturk, my grandmother would have been 'a covered person' who would have been reliant on a man for her livelihood. Instead, she went to boarding school, wrote a thesis on Balzac, and became a teacher.”

“In senior year at college, Paula Vogel was my playwriting teacher; she is the first person to introduce me to the notion that a woman could actually forge a career in the theatre. Up until then, the possibility seemed remote and inaccessible, as I had very few role models who directly touched my life.”

“Going to talk to my little girl's teacher is a far cry from what people probably think I spend my time doing.”

“I come from labor country. My mom was a teacher and was very involved in the teachers' union.”

“In terms of moments that pushed me toward becoming a writer... My parents, my wife, and my English teacher in the 8th grade were all hugely supportive at moments during my development as a writer that were critical, where I might have quit when things got too hard.”

“My teacher was still practicing Bach until his death at 89. I have no doubt that if I live that long, I'll be doing the same thing.”

“I love films that make me react emotionally and physically when you walk out of the cinema. Two of my favorite films however have got to be 'The Tree Of Life' and 'The Piano Teacher,' which also stars one of my favourite actresses Isabelle Huppert.”

“As a former teacher, I know how frustrating it must be to watch students walk out of class, particularly if they have important exams on the horizon.”

“Throughout my life, ever since I played for Clausenengen back home, instead of listening to the teacher at school, I was writing down all the chances I missed in a book thinking 'I should have done this.' Scoring goals was all I thought about.”

“I wanted to be a Teacher with a big T: teach the whole planet. It led me into writing and speaking to large groups.”

“We don't look at teachers as scholars the way they do in Europe. In Spain you're called a professor if you're a high school teacher, and they pay teachers - they pay teachers in Europe.”

“I was always into sports and a lot of physical activities. My dad was a kickboxer and a body builder. My mom was an aerobics teacher.”

“We are all busy. It's easy to find excuses for not reaching out to others, but I imagine they will sound as hollow to our Heavenly Father as the elementary school boy who gave his teacher a note asking that he be excused from school March 30th through the 34th.”

“I realized that that Golden Rule does not exist online. You are not held to that same standard as when there is a teacher in the room or someone monitoring behavior.”

“President Obama and Secretary Duncan have made stronger teacher evaluation a key part of their education reform efforts. Under their signature plan, called 'Race to the Top,' states can win federal support for schools by improving teacher evaluations.”

“When I was 11, I played the part of Rumpelstiltskin, and my teacher told me I would make a great actor.”

“To see, once again, that African American students are more likely to have a limited math curriculum and an underpaid novice teacher is disheartening and should be a call to action for policymakers and educators.”

“Many of us have been touched by the magic of a great teacher. I know I have.”

“I was a very shy kid. In 8th grade, I had a teacher who got me into improv.”

“I've been a teacher at the college level, in composition mostly, and I've been an editor on magazines.”

“My father was my main influence. He was a preacher, but he was also a history and political science teacher, and since he was my hero, I wanted to follow in his footsteps and become a teacher.”

“The better the teacher, the better the future of America.”

“The first time I can remember thinking that I would like to be a writer came in sixth grade, when our teacher Mrs. Crandall gave us an extended period of time to write a long story. I loved doing it. I started working seriously at becoming a writer when I was seventeen.”

“Here's what my CV usually does not say: I was trained as a teacher. My first job lasted less than 60 days. I was an assistant professor at a good college at Delhi University, but I found it very political, very suffocating. At the age of 23, you're not very tolerant of those things.”

“I was terrified of girls until sophomore year of high school. I couldn't even borrow pencils from them. I'd have to wait until the teacher called me out on it, like, 'Does anybody have a pencil for Teddy?' because I'd be too scared to ask the girl next to me.”

“Writing is very cathartic for me. As a teacher, I hear many students say that writing can be painful and exhausting. It can be, but ultimately I believe that if you push through, the process is healing and exhilarating.”

“My father was a trained accountant, a BCom from Sydenham College and a self-taught violinist. In the 1920s, when he was in his teens, he heard a great violinist, Jascha Heifetz, and he was so inspired listening to him that he bought himself a violin, and with a little help from an Italian teacher, he learned to play it.”

“No matter how good a teacher is, if that teacher won't play as part of the team, you're better off without her.”

“When I was about 6 years old, I got dragged into an audition for the school play. A teacher thought it would be good for me because I liked to perform and show off.”

“Growing up in this post-apartheid era, the first generation of teens in South Africa living in this new democracy, I often found myself feeling different. I was often the only person of color in an otherwise all-white school. And within the Indian community, because of my training with an English acting teacher, my accent was very different.”

“I have always admired teachers because teaching, like the priesthood, medicine and writing, is a vocation. You don't become a teacher because you want wealth. It is the same with writing.”

“A teacher has to understand the ability and capability of his or her student, their sentiments and varying levels of sensitivity to be able to bring out the best.”

“People go into cartooning because they're shy and they're angry. That's when you're sitting in the back of a classroom drawing the teacher.”

“Seems like my iron play gets a little better every year. Which makes sense - I've been working hard on things with my teacher, Jim McLean.”

“Being a mother has been my greatest teacher and also the most self-sacrificing thing I've ever done.”