What's your favorite quote or your motto in regards to education? I have to hand in this paper for our school that lists many things about me including a favorite quote, but my favorite quotes are all about animals! For the purpose of this questionnaire, I thought the quote should be related to education, so I need some help from all you "experts" out there for some ideas. Thanks in advance.
Everything has its limit--iron ore cannot be educated into gold. All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal, valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That is, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries it can profit him to know that the bottom half of it is rotten. - Notebook 1908 In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made school boards. --Mark Twain Don’t be content with being average. Average is as close to the bottom as it is to the top. Behavior is a mirror in which every one shows his image. A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else. Educated men are as much superior to uneducated men as the living are to the dead. He that will cheat at play will cheat you any way. Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards; they simply unveil them to the eyes of men. Silently and imperceptibly, we grow strong or weak; and at last some crisis shows us what we have become. Ignorance deprives men of freedom because they do not know what alternatives there are. It is impossible to choose to do what one has never heard of. Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among rocks. Ask God’s blessing on your work, but don’t ask Him to do it for you. The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for out wits to grow sharper. What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult for each other? One trouble with the world is that so many people who stand up vigorously for their rights fall down miserably on their duties. Failure is an event, never a person. When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization. A child who is protected from all controversial ideas is as vulnerable as a child who is protected from every germ. The infection, when it comes -- and it will come -- may overwhelm the system, be it the immune system or the belief system. Be ashamed to die until you have achieved some victory for humanity. What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul. "Every man has a right to his opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts." --Bernard M. Baruch "To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant." --A. B. Alcott "Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects." --Will Rogers "A man doesn't know what he knows until he knows what he doesn't know." --Laurence Peter "Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time." --Rabbinic saying "Something you consider bad may bring out your child's talents; something you consider good may stifle them." –Chateaubriand "Leadership is action, not position." --Donald H. McGannon "To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated. --James Carse We do not see things as they are; we see them as we are. Engrave this upon my heart: There isn't anyone you couldn't love once you've heard their story. --Mary Lou Kownacki Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. -- Thomas Alva Edison I believe that words can help us move or keep us paralyzed, and that our choices of language and verbal tone have something -- a great deal -- to do with how we live our lives and whom we end up speaking with and hearing; and that we can deflect words, by trivialization, of course, but also by ritualized respect, or we can let them enter our souls and mix with the juices of our minds." --Adrienne Rich "The ability to accept responsibility is the measure of the man." --Roy Smith "To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it." --Mother Teresa You have to pay dearly for being an imaginative person. You see a great deal and feel a great deal, but there is ugliness to see and feel as well as beauty, and in yourself as well as in others. Sherwood Anderson To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the prize of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness. Erich Fromm As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might. Marian Anderson I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain. James Baldwin You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try. Beverly Sills When faced with a decision... decide. When faced with a choice... choose. Sitting on the fence will leave you too tense Because you neither win nor lose. --Barry Spilchuk Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside while we live. Norman Cousins (You asked for it. I've been collecting quotations since the seventies and this is one file-card's worth.)
wow! that's a LOT of good quotes, mama. I'll just add one more. "Kids don't care how much you know until they know how much you care" - anonymous
And there is that all time classic ..... Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life. I know , boring, and common, but oh so true!!!!
“And will you succeed? Yes indeed, yes indeed! Ninety-eight and three-quarters percent guaranteed!” --Dr. Seuss "Highlight my strengths, and my weaknesses will disappear." --a Maori saying "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." --William Butler Yeats
Ok, I know this isn't technically an "education" quote, but my students - and my children - know my favorite quote: "Build a bridge and get over it!" I say this often when the kids get whiny about something or other. In fact, if I say, "Build a bridge....", several other students will finish the quote. Sometimes I don't even need to say it, I just need to form an arc with my hand (building a bridge) and the kids know what I mean. Kind of silly, but there you have it~ Peace, Wendy
I love M. Russell Ballard's: “I believe that every human soul is teaching something to someone nearly every minute here in mortality.” I'm learning from my students, they are learning from me, they are learning from one another. We learn from strangers in a grocery store, from characters in a book, from everyone we meet. Somtimes we learn what not to do and how not to react. In school we're not just learning math, science, and social studies - we're learning how to live, and that is most important. I know that even during those few minutes in between classes, or while I am on the phone with a parent, or while I'm chatting with a coworker...students are watching me and most certainly learning.
"My opinons may have changed, but that does not change the fact that I am right." I have this one hanging up in my classroom (along with another one that claims that I eat cell phones for breakfast)
"There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people." ~Thomas Jefferson "The highest result of education is tolerance." ~Helen Keller "Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. Autograph your work with excellence." ~Anon. "Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom." ~Thomas Jefferson Best for last---"If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way." ~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
An old favorite, for lots of teachers, but also for me. I do observations in classrooms for a part-time job and I always smile when I see this tacked up by a teacher's desk... "I've come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It's my personal approach that creates the climate. It's my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or de-humanized." ---Dr. Haim Ginott, 1976
In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something else. --Lee Iacocca And my favorite . . . . "It will be a great day when schools get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber." (actually it's a bumper sticker but I still think it's cute!)
There is so much good in the worst of us and so much bad in the best of us that it ill behooves any of us to talk about the rest of us xxxxx--Unknown, via my grandfather
Expecting all children the same age to learn from the same materials is like expecting all children the same age to wear the same size clothing. – Madeline Hunter The basic principle of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be "undemocratic." These differences between the pupils - for they are obviously and nakedly individual differences - must be disguised. This can be done on various levels. At universities, examinations must be framed so that nearly all the students get good marks. Entrance examinations must be framed so that all, or nearly all, citizens can go to universities, whether they have any power (or wish) to profit by higher education or not. At schools, the children who are too stupid or lazy to learn languages and mathematics and elementary science can be set to doing the things that children used to do in their spare time. Let them, for example, make mud pies and call it modelling. But all the time there must be no faintest hint that they are inferior to the children who are at work. Whatever nonsense they are engaged in must have - I believe the English already use the phrase - "parity of esteem." An even more drastic scheme is not impossible. Children who are fit to proceed to a higher class may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma - Beelzebub, what a useful word! - by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval's attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT. – C.S. Lewis, from "Screwtape Proposes a Toast," 1959 It is very nearly impossible... to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind. – James Baldwin The pupil who is never required to do what he cannot do, never does what he can do. – John Stuart Mill It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber. – (unknown) If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. – (unknown) Simply being different isn't wrong. Don't try to be a duckling if you're born to be a swan. – (unknown) There are young people out there cutting raw cocaine with chemicals from the local hardware store. They are manufacturing new highs and new products buy soaking marijuana in ever changing agents, and each of these new drugs is more addictive, more deadly and less costly than the last. How is it that we have failed to tap that ingenuity, that sense of experimentation? How is it that these kids who can measure grams and kilos and can figure out complex monetary transactions cannot pass a simple math or chemistry test? – Senator Kohl, from the U.S. Senate Hearing: "Crisis in Math and Science Education." Once upon a time, America sheltered an Einstein, went to the moon, and gave the world the laser, the electronic computer, nylons, television, and the cure for polio. Today, we are in the process, albeit unwittingly, of abandoning this leadership role. – Leon M. Lederman, Nobel Prize winner in Physics To learn, you must want to be taught. – Proverbs 12:1 Merely to stuff the child with a lot of information, making him pass examinations, is the most unintelligent form of education. – Jiddu Krishnamurti Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon. – The Observer, 'Sayings of the Week,' October 7, 1951
Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for awhile and leave footprints on our hearts. And we are never, ever the same.-- Anonymous
My passion is caring about those who don’t have enough to make it through life in society. It’s about poor people and families that need help raising their children. That’s why I come to work every day, that’s why I want to make a difference." Vega-Marquiz, Luz Philanthropist
So many gods, so many creeds, So many paths that wind and wind, While just the art of being kind Is all the sad world needs." – Ella Wheeler Wilcox
"All of us do not have equal talent, but all of us should have equal opportunity to develop our talent." ~John F. Kennedy "Link yourself to your potential, not to your past." ~Stephen Covey "Find a job that you love doing and you will never have to work a day in your life." ~Confucius "Don't look down on anyone unless you are helping them up." ~Jesse Jackson
Keeping score of old scores and scars, getting even and one-upping, always makes you less than you are. - Malcolm Forbes By the way, I like your quotes everyone! That last one is a great one, TXteacher, the one by Jesse Jackson. Nice.
“The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without his teacher.” -- Elbert Hubbard “Children have never been good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” -- James Arthur Baldwin “Life affords no greater responsibility, no greater privilege, than the raising of the next generation.” -- Dr. C. Everett Koop
This one was part of the routine by a very funny speaker at an Education Union professional development I attended: Those who can, do! Those who can't do, teach! ..... And those who can't teach, become education minister! The whole room cracked up .... (The education minister in question was replaced a few months later .... hehehe)
“Come to the edge, he said. They said: We are afraid. Come to the edge, he said. They came. He pushed them and they flew.” --Guillaume Apollinaire That's always been one of my favorites.
Here are a few more quotes..... "Knowledge is Power" "A Good sport is always a Winner" "Your Success results from your own effort" "Readers are Leaders" "Believe, Achieve, and Succeed" "The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not upon our circumstances"
"Reach for the stars.You might not get them, but you won't wind up getting a handful of mud either" "Nothing worthwhile is ever learned in ten easy lessons." "Everyone from time to time needs a little boost. If you see a turtle on a fence post, remember he had some help getting there." "The surest way to make yourself happy is to make someone else happy" "If you're doing your best, you won't have any time to worry about failure." "As you begin a new task or assignment, it is your attitude more then anything else that will determine your sucess." Thats all I have right now....
I love everyone's quotes! I am a collector of quotes. Keep them coming. Grammy, I agree, that Jesse Jackson quote is awesome. It is one of my all-time favorites!
