Teacher Quotes

"Find a good teacher, as I found for my sons. I feel the worst thing you can do is to try and teach your own children yourself, because there is a natural rebellion that occurs"

Keith Emerson, Musician

"There are better ways we can transform this virulent hatred - by living our ideals, the Peace Corps, exchange students, teachers, exporting our music, poetry, blue jeans"

Helen Thomas, Journalist

"I saw as a teacher how, if you take that spark of learning that those children have, and you ignite it, you can take a child from any background to a lifetime of creativity and accomplishment"

Paul Wellstone, Politician

"The impending teacher shortage is the most critical education issue we will face in the next decade"

David E. Price, Politician

"I don't learn so good, no matter how good the teacher is"

Warren Zevon, Musician

"I used to write things for friends. There was this girl I had a crush on, and she had a teacher she didn't like at school. I had a real crush on her, so almost every day I would write her a little short story where she would kill him in a different way"

Stephen Colbert, Comedian

"The answer, of course, in the mouth of a Christian teacher is that in Christianity alone is there both present joy and future hope"

Mary A. Ward

"In the remaining months, we should focus on achieving more robust international involvement in training of Iraqi soldiers, police officers, judges, teachers, and doctors - all key elements needed to end the sectarian and civil conflict and build Iraq's future"

John Olver, Politician

"He was very commanding, and you had to know what you were doing to work for Mr. Rogers. I learned how to ride very quickly with him as my riding teacher"

Glenn Ford, Actor

"History is the only true teacher, the revolution the best school for the proletariat"

Rosa Luxemburg, Activist

"I need a teacher quite as much as Helen. I know the education of this child will be the distinguishing event of my life, if I have the brains and perseverance to accomplish it"

Anne Sullivan, Educator

"My grandmother was a teacher, my sister was a teacher, my daughter was a teacher and is now a superintendent in northern California, and my son-in-law is a high school principal. I am surrounded"

Loni Anderson, Actress

"The main thing I am interested in is my experience as a teacher"

Frank McCourt, Author

"When you get to 15 and most of your teachers are priests, there's bound to be a conflict"

Ian Hart, Actor

"Mike Watt and I had the same teacher. Mr. Tanaka"

Krist Novoselic, Musician

"Aside from a few master teachers that we have had over the years, this has been a completely local talent development. But people have started to come now from Chicago, we have a number of students from Chicago and different places of the country and even in the world"

Katherine Dunham, Dancer

"There happened to be guitar classes at the college, and there was a guitar teacher there with whom I used to play. In addition, I also would go out into country schools and teach little kids basic guitar and singing a few times a week"

Mark Knopfler, Musician

"Realistically, I think we are not prepared to go home until we do get more teachers and lower class sizes"

John Podesta, Lawyer

"I spent most of my high school years on movie sets and I'd have like one teacher, which was really bad"

Devon Sawa, Actor

"I lived in a town of 400 until I was like nine or ten. My dad coached all the sports - he was a gym teacher and health teacher for grades K-12"

January Jones, Actress

"When you become a parent, or a teacher, you turn into a manager of this whole system. You become the person controlling the bubble of innocence around a child, regulating it"

Kazuo Ishiguro, Author

"As a former high school teacher, I know that investing in education is one of the most important things we can do, not only for our children, but for the benefit of our whole community"

Ed Pastor, Politician

"I count myself well educated, for the admirable woman at the head of the school which I attended from the age of four and a half till I was thirteen and a half, was a born teacher in advance of her own times"

Catherine Helen Spence, Author

"My father also happened to be an intellectual, as learned, literate, informed, and curious as anyone I have known. Unobtrusively and casually, he was my wise and gentle teacher"

James Tobin, Economist

"I claim Dickens as a mentor. He's my teacher. He's one of my driving forces"

Anne Rice, Novelist

"Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing"

Denis Waitley, Writer

"I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework"

Lily Tomlin, Actress

"A Latin teacher told me I might make a good actress, and that stuck in my memory. I did some modeling, and Polanski gave me that small part"

Jacqueline Bisset, Actress

"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"

James S. Coleman, Sociologist

"A child's learning is a function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher"

James S. Coleman, Sociologist

"I'd like to say I was smart enough to finish six grades in five years, but I think perhaps the teacher was just glad to get rid of me"

Alan Shepard, Astronaut

"When I first started teaching at Berkeley in 1958, I could not announce that I was gay to anybody, though probably quite a few of my fellow teachers knew"

Thom Gunn, Poet

"It was just expected that I would go to college. Both my parents are teachers and they tolerated acting, but I was going to go to a school of quality or bust. Which made my downshifting back to acting afterward a little difficult"

Wentworth Miller, Actor

"I have long enjoyed the friendship and companionship of Republicans because I am by instinct a teacher, and I would like to teach them something"

Woodrow Wilson

"Some teachers just have a knack for working with autistic children. Other teachers do not have it"

Temple Grandin, Educator

"Some autistic children cannot stand the sound of certain voices. I have come across cases where teachers tell me that certain children have problems with their voice or another person's voice. This problem tends to be related to high-pitched ladies' voices"

Temple Grandin, Educator

"Research is starting to show that a child should be engaged at least 20 hours a week. I do not think it matters which program you choose as long as it keeps the child actively engaged with the therapist, teacher, or parent for at least 20 hours a week"

Temple Grandin, Educator

"Poetry is a special use of language that opens onto the real. The business of the poet is truth telling, which is why in the Celtic tradition no one could be a teacher unless he or she was a poet"

Huston Smith, Theologian

"It was difficult being a teacher and out of the closet in the '50s. By the time I retired, the English department was proud of having a gay poet of a certain minor fame. It was a very satisfactory change!"

Thom Gunn, Poet

"I remember when I was a kid in school and teachers would explain things to me about what I read, and I'd think, Where did they get that? I didn't read that in there. Later you look at it and think, That's kind of an interesting idea"

Norton Juster, Architect

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