30+ Bel Kaufman Quotes (Humorous, Satirical And Insightful)

Bel Kaufman was an American author best known for her 1964 novel, Up the Down Staircase. The novel was based on her experience as a teacher in a New York City high school and was an instant bestseller. Kaufman also wrote several other books, including Love, Etc., Sunday in the Park, and Grandparent Power.

Top 10 Bel Kaufman Quotes

1. Education is not a product: mark, diploma, job, money-in that order; it is a process, a never-ending one.
2. Children are the true connoisseurs. What’s precious to them has no price, only value.
3. Love is the ultimate giving, an expression of one's best self.
4. Learning is a process of mutual discovery for teacher and pupil. Keep an open mind to their unexpected responses.
5. Time collapses and expands like an erratic accordion.
6. Never mind the cream; it will always rise to the top. It's the skim milk that needs good teachers.
7. People ate bread made of the shells of peas because there was no flour.
8. I want to point the way to something that should forever lure them, when the TV set is broken and the movie is over and the school bell has rung for the last time.
9. Teachers try to make us feel lower than themselves, maybe because this is because they feel lower than outside people. One teacher told me to get out of the room and never come back, which I did.
10. Mythology is studied in the school system because most of us come from it.

Bel Kaufman Short Quotes

• I had used my sense of humor; I had called it proportion, perspective. But perspective is distance.
• A teacher is frequently the only adult in the pupil's environment who treats him with respect.
• ... good teachers, like Tolstoy's happy families, are alike everywhere.
• The heart has its reasons; it's the mind that's suspect.
• To the young, cliches seem freshly minted.
• When giving comes directly from the heart, it can never disappoint or embarrass.
• Education can't make us all leaders, but it can teach us which leader to follow.

Bel Kaufman Famous Quotes And Sayings

Laughter keeps you healthy. You can survive by seeing the humor in everything. Thumb your nose at sadness; turn the tables on tragedy. You can’t laugh and be angry, you can’t laugh and feel sad, you can’t laugh and feel envious. — Bel Kaufman

I so enjoy being old because for the first time I don't have to do anything-work, teach, study. I feel very good about myself-and at my age I can say no to anything now if I don't want to do it. What a liberating word. — Bel Kaufman

To the outside world, of course, this job is a cinch: 9 to 3, five days a week, two months' summer vacation with pay, all legal holidays, prestige and respect. My mother, for example, has the pleasant notion that my day consists of nodding graciously to the rustle of starched curtsies and a chorus of respectful voices bidding me good morning. — Bel Kaufman

Best marks go to cheaters and memorizers. Marks depend on memorizing and not on real knowledge. When you cram into your head for a test you may get a high mark but forget it the next day. That's not an education. I suggest just Good and Bad at the end of the term on report cards. Or maybe nothing. Frank Allen — Bel Kaufman

But if there is such a thing as social commitment in literature, I think it must manifest itself in a reader's awareness of the human condition, in the writer's touching some common nerve ending. I think this kind of social commitment, like a lady's slip, should be there but it must not show. — Bel Kaufman

I like the word OLD. Not senior, that's for proms. Older? Older than whom? 'Old' is honorable and ripe — Bel Kaufman

If a teacher wants to know something why doesn't she look it up herself instead of making we students do it? We benefit ourselves more by listening to her, after all she's the teacher! — Bel Kaufman

And that's it; that's why I want to teach; that's the one and only compensation: to make a permanent difference in the life of a child. — Bel Kaufman

I’ll never retire as long as I live—that’s like retiring from life! I’ll never stop writing, teaching, lecturing. If you’re in good health, living is exciting on its own. — Bel Kaufman

I am writing this during my lunch period, because I need to reach towards the outside world of sanity, because I am overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the clerical work still to be done, and because at this hour of the morning normal ladies are still sleeping. — Bel Kaufman

One of my students had written wistfully of a dream-school that would have "windows with trees in them. — Bel Kaufman

The preciousness of every moment is emphasized with every tick of the clock. Isn't it a magnificent day today? — Bel Kaufman

I feel no different than I felt at 99, 98 or 97. Just because you live a long time, you get all this attention. Just because you survived? Of course, I survived a lot. — Bel Kaufman

Life Lessons by Bel Kaufman

1. Bel Kaufman's work emphasizes the importance of understanding and appreciating the complexities of human relationships.
2. Her writing often explores the themes of communication, empathy, and the power of humor in helping us to navigate difficult situations.
3. Through her work, Kaufman reminds us that we all have the capacity to understand and connect with one another, regardless of our differences.