Educators have one of the most important but difficult jobs in the world. Although many have tried to describe the effect of teachers in teacher appreciation quotes, there are just no words to adequately describe the many hats they wear. By the time Teacher Appreciation Month rolls around, they’ve earned that summer break! Check out our list of teacher appreciation quotes to remember why you should make your teacher feel super special! If you want to say thank you, consider writing a note of gratitude and including one of these teacher appreciation quotes (a gift card or another small gift never hurts, either!).
Say Thank You With Our Favorite Teacher Appreciation Quotes
1. One child, one teacher, one pen, and one book can change the world. —Malala Yousafzai
2. A good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination, and instill a love of learning. —Brad Henry
3. A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. —Henry Brooks Adams
4. Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers. —Josef Albers
5. A good teacher is like a candle: It consumes itself to light the way for others. —Unknown
6. A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary. —Thomas Carruthers
7. If a teacher have any opinion which he wishes to conceal, his pupils will become as fully indoctrinated into that as into any which he publishes. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
8. Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace. —Confucius
9. It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge. —Albert Einstein
10. Every now and then a man’s mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions. —Oliver Wendell Holmes
11. Everyone who remembers his own educational experience remembers teachers, not methods and techniques. The teacher is the kingpin of the educational situation. —Sidney Hook
12. Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher. —Japanese Proverb
13. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. —Carl Jung
14. One test of the correctness of educational procedure is the happiness of the child. —Maria Montessori
15. But as I grew, my heroes changed so that now I can honestly say that anyone who does anything to help a child in this life is a hero to me. —Fred Rogers
16. What is the greatest sign of success for a teacher thus transformed? It is to be able to say, “The children are now working as if I did not exist.” —Maria Montessori
17. I think the teaching profession contributes more to the future of our society than any other single profession. —John Wooden
18. If you can read this, thank a teacher. —American Proverb
19. When educating the minds of our youth, we must not forget to educate their hearts. —Dalai Lama
20. The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. —William Arthur Ward
21. They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel. —Carl W. Buehner
22. The task of the excellent teacher is to stimulate “apparently ordinary” people to unusual effort. The tough problem is not in identifying winners: it is in making winners out of ordinary people. —K. Patricia Cross
23. If you give a man a fish he is hungry again in an hour. If you teach him to catch a fish you do him a good turn. —Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie
24. Teaching is a very noble profession that shapes the character, caliber, and future of an individual. If the people remember me as a good teacher, that will be the biggest honor for me. —APJ Abdul Kalam
25. Summer vacation is the time when parents realize teachers are grossly underpaid. —Unknown
26. Teaching is not just a job. It is a human service, and it must be thought of as a mission. —Dr. Ralph Tyler
27. He who opens a school door closes a prison. —Victor Hugo
28. If [the teacher] is indeed wise, he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind. —Kahlil Gibran
![If [the teacher] is indeed wise, he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind. —Kahlil Gibran](https://www.weareteachers.com/wp-content/uploads/Thank-You-Quotes-28_v2-1.jpg "Thank-You-Quotes-28_v2-1")
29. Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition. —Jacques Barzun
30. Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre. —Gail Godwin
31. My teacher thought I was smarter than I was—so I was. —Unknown 6-year-old child
32. Education is the key to success in life, and teachers make a lasting impact in the lives of their students. —Solomon Ortiz
33. One good teacher in a lifetime may sometimes change a delinquent into a solid citizen. —Philip Wylie
34. When you teach your son, you teach your son’s son. —The Talmud
35. Teachers teach because they care. Teaching young people is what they do best. It requires long hours, patience, and care. —Horace Mann
36. A teacher takes a hand, opens a mind, and touches a heart. —Unknown
37. Not all superheroes wear capes—some have teaching degrees. —Unknown
38. It takes a big heart to help shape little minds. —Unknown
39. Teaching is the profession that teaches all the other professions. —Unknown
40. If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow. —John Dewey
41. Children are likely to live up to what you believe of them. —Lady Bird Johnson
42. What a teacher writes on the blackboard of life can never be erased. —Unknown
43. Teaching: the only profession where you steal things from home and bring them to work. —Unknown
44. Cheers to all of the teachers who give out pencils every single day knowing that they’ll never get them back. —Unknown
45. The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery. —Mark Van Doren
46. Don’t judge a teacher until you’ve walked a mile in her shoes. —Unknown
47. I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework. —Lily Tomlin
48. The best teachers teach from the heart, not from the book. —Unknown
49. It’s the teacher that makes the difference, not the classroom. —Michael Morpurgo
50. The teacher … must have a kind of faith that the child will reveal himself through work. —Maria Montessori
51. In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn. —Phil Collins
52. The best teacher of children, in brief, is one who is essentially childlike. —H.L. Mencken
53. Without teachers, life would have no class. —Unknown
54. Good teachers are the ones who can challenge young minds without losing their own. —Unknown
55. A truly amazing teacher is hard to find, difficult to part with, and impossible to forget. —Unknown
56. The duties of a teacher are neither few nor small, but they elevate the mind and give energy to the character. —Dorothea Dix
57. A teacher nourishes the soul of a child for a lifetime. —Unknown
58. A truly special teacher is very wise and sees tomorrow in every child’s eyes. —Unknown
59. Teaching is the greatest act of optimism. —Colleen Wilcox
60. The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called “truth.” —Dan Rather
61. Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted. —Garrison Keillor
62. Experience is the only teacher, and we get his lesson indifferently in any school. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
63. In spite of some bad experiences, I’m a firm believer in the trial-and-error method of learning. —Andy Rooney
64. The best CEOs I know are teachers, and at the core of what they teach is strategy. —Michael Porter
65. A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust. —Gertrude Jekyll
66. The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-trust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciples. —Amos Bronson Alcott
67. Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been their own teachers. —Joshua Reynolds
68. Shakespeare, Dickens, Mark Twain, and so many others were my dearest friends and greatest teachers. —Lloyd Alexander
69. A teacher enlarges people in all sorts of ways besides just his subject matter. —Wallace Stegner
70. Teachers are expected to reach unattainable goals with inadequate tools. The miracle is that at times they accomplish this impossible task. —Haim Ginott
71. Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual. —Arthur Koestler
72. It is not easy to imagine how little interested a scientist usually is in the work of any other, with the possible exception of the teacher who backs him or the student who honors him. —Jean Rostand
73. My father followed, during most of his life, the precarious occupation of a country school teacher. —Simon Newcomb
74. The whole secret of the teacher’s force lies in the conviction that men are convertible. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
75. I have always felt that the true text-book for the pupil is his teacher. —Mahatma Gandhi
76. Not to keep from error, is the duty of the educator of men, but to guide the erring one, even to let him swill his error out of full cups—that is the wisdom of teachers. —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
77. What do I consider a teacher should be? One who breathes life into knowledge so that it takes new form in progress and civilization. —Helen Keller
78. Acquire new knowledge whilst thinking over the old, and you may become a teacher of others. —Confucius
79. Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. —Nelson Mandela
80. Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it. —Marian Wright Edelman
81. The good man is the teacher of the bad, and the bad is the material from which the good may learn. He who does not value the teacher, or greatly care for the material, is greatly deluded . —Lao Tzu
82. One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil. —Friedrich Nietzsche
83. If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself. —Confucius
84. The best method for a given teacher is the one which is most familiar to the teacher. —Leo Tolstoy
85. My studies gave me only a very superficial knowledge of philosophy but sharpened my interest in it. I benefited greatly from being a teacher—that is, from being able to spend a great deal of time reading, writing and educating myself. —Simone de Beauvoir
86. The greatest teacher has nothing to say. He simply gives himself in service, and never worries. —Lao Tzu
87. Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important. —Bill Gates
88. Of course you will insist on modesty in the children, and respect to their teachers, but if the boy stops you in your speech, cries out that you are wrong and sets you right, hug him! —Ralph Waldo Emerson
89. If you become a teacher, by your pupils you’ll be taught. —Oscar Hammerstein II
90. Like any teenager who reads The Great Gatsby, probably, I was madly in love with the teacher who had opened it up for me. —Rob Sheffield
91. When I was sixteen I started publishing all kinds of things in school magazines. My main feedback came from my English teacher, Miss Bessie B. Billings, who said, “I can’t understand this at all, dear, so it must be good.” —Margaret Atwood
92. The best teacher lodges an intent not in the mind but in the heart. —Anne Michaels
93. A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. —Henry Adams
94. The real job of every moral teacher is to keep bringing us back to the simple principles, which we’re so anxious not to see. —C.S. Lewis
95. Academic chairs are many, but wise and noble teachers are few; lecture-rooms are numerous and large, but the number of young people who genuinely thirst after truth and justice is small. —Albert Einstein
96. Be versed in ancient lore, and familiarize yourself with the modern; then may you become teachers. —Confucius
97. Find a teacher who is an integral being, a beacon who extends his light and virtue with equal ease to those who appreciate him and those who don’t. Shape yourself in his mold, bathe in his nourishing radiance, and reflect it out to the rest of the world. —Lao Tzu
98. An understanding heart is everything in a teacher and cannot be esteemed highly enough. —Carl Jung
99. But remain the teacher of the young teachers. Advise and direct us, and we will be ready to learn. I will have need of you as long as I live. —Jean-Jacques Rousseau
100. A teacher who establishes rapport with the taught, becomes one with them, learns more from them than he teaches them. —Mahatma Gandhi
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Plus, if you liked these teacher appreciation quotes, check out these team-building quotes for classrooms and schools.
