Educator Quotes

The goal of early childhood education should be to activate the child's own natural desire to learn.

To assist a child we must provide him with an environment which will enable him to develop freely.

The most important period of life is not the age of university studies, but the first one, the period from birth to the age of six.

The child who has felt a strong love for his surroundings and for all living creatures, who has discovered joy and enthusiasm in work, gives us reason to hope that humanity can develop in a new direction.

The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.

Peace is what every human being is craving for, and it can be brought about by humanity through the child.

When you are dead, you don't even know that you are dead. It's only pain for others. Same thing when you are stupid.

We shall walk together on this path of life, for all things are part of the universe and are connected with each other to form one whole unity.

Free the child's potential, and you will transform him into the world.

Our aim is not merely to make the child understand, and still less to force him to memorize, but so to touch his imagination as to enthuse him to his innermost core.

The senses, being the explorers of the world, open the way to knowledge.

What the hand does the mind remembers.

Any child who is self-sufficient, who can tie his shoes, dress or undress himself, reflects in his joy and sense of achievement the image of human dignity which is derived from a sense of independence.

Character, not circumstances, makes the man.

A woman is free if she lives by her own standards and creates her own destiny, if she prizes her individuality and puts no boundaries on her hopes for tomorrow.

If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination, we accept the responsibility ourselves. We should, therefore, protest openly everything ... that smacks of discrimination or slander.

I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome while trying to succeed.

...morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.

The first essential for the child’s development is concentration.

The child who concentrates is immensely happy.

Play is the work of the child.

Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't.

The child is truly a miraculous being, and this should be felt deeply by the educator.

Children are human beings to whom respect is due, superior to us by reason of their innocence and of the greater possibilities of their future.

I leave you love. I leave you hope. I leave you the challenge of developing confidence in one another. I leave you respect for the use of power. I leave you faith. I leave you racial dignity.

I plunged into the job of creating something from nothing.

... Though I hadn't a penny left, I considered cash money as the smallest part of my resources. I had faith in a living God, faith in myself, and a desire to serve.

In an effective classroom students should not only know what they are doing, they should also know why and how.

Next to God we are indebted to women, first for life itself, and then for making it worth living.

I will permit no one to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate them.

Education cannot be effective unless it helps a child to open up himself to life.

There is a certain class of race problem-solvers who don't want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.

Children are not the people of tomorrow, but people today.

They are entitled to be taken seriously. They have a right to be treated by adults with tenderness and respect, as equals. They should be allowed to grow into whoever they were meant to be - The unknown person inside each of them is the hope for the future.

When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendors of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.

The single greatest effect on student achievement is not race, it is not poverty - it is the effectiveness of the teacher.

For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer.

Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying.

Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.

Faith is the first factor in a life devoted to service.

Without it, nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible.

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up. James Baldwin on Love

One test of the correctness of educational procedure is the happiness of the child.

It is not your environment, it is you- the quality of your mind, the integrity of your soul and the determination of your will that will decide your future and shape your life.

There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.

Don't go through life, grow through life.

Try to understand what I am saying: everything is dependent on everything else, everything is connected, nothing is separate. Therefore everything is going in the only way it can go. If people were different everything would be different. They are what they are, so everything is as it is.

To those of you with your years of service still ahead, the challenge is yours.

Stop doubting yourselves. Have the courage to make up your minds and hold your decisions. Refuse to be BOUGHT for a nickel, or a million dollars, or a job!

Strategy is about setting yourself apart from the competition.

It's not a matter of being better at what you do - it's a matter of being different at what you do.

Those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.

The first aim of the prepared environment is, as far as it is possible, to render the growing child independent of the adult.

If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.

Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

We are closer to God when we are asking questions than when we think we have the answers.

Growth comes from activity, not from intellectual understanding.

Racism is man's gravest threat to man - the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.

I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.

We live in a world which respects power above all things.

Power, intelligently directed, can lead to more freedom. Unwisely directed, it can be a dreadful, destructive force.

Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.

Those who are the happiest, are those who do the most for others.

I believe unconditionally in the ability of people to respond when they are told the truth. We need to be taught to study rather than believe, to inquire rather than to affirm.

Don't go through life, grow through life.