50 Inspirational Homeschooling Quotes

In the journey of homeschooling, inspiration can be a powerful ally. Whether you're just starting out or are a seasoned home educator, the right words at the right time can make all the difference. We've curated a collection of 50 powerful quotes designed to uplift, encourage, and motivate you on this unique educational path. These carefully selected words of wisdom from educators, thinkers, and pioneers in the field of learning encapsulate the essence of homeschooling. Dive in and let each quote remind you of the profound impact you're making on your child’s life and learning.

1. “The function of a child is to live his/her own life, not the life that his/her anxious parents think he/she should live, nor a life according to the purpose of the educators who thinks they knows best” - A.S. Neill

2. “I was delighted to see him growing more cautious and skeptical about what he heard, especially when he heard it from someone in apparent authority. I think that is fundamental to a good education. And if it comes back to bite me from time to time, that's a price worth paying.” - Martine Millman

3. “We want our children to become who they are--- and a developed person is, above all, free. But freedom as we define it doesn't mean doing what you want. Freedom means the ability to make choices that are good for you. It is the power to choose to become what you are capable of becoming, to develop your unique potential by making choices that turn possibility into reality. It is the ability to make choices that actualize you. As often as not, maybe more often than not, this kind of freedom means doing what you do not want, doing what is uncomfortable or tiring or boring or annoying.” - Gregory Millman

4. “Education is a system of imposed ignorance.” - Noam Chomsky

5. “You think me foolish to call instruction a torment, but if you had been as much used as myself to hear poor little children first learning their letters and then learning to spell, if you had ever seen how stupid they can be for a whole morning together, and how tired my poor mother is at the end of it, as I am in the habit of seeing almost every day of my life at home, you would allow that to torment and to instruct might sometimes be used as synonymous words.” - Jane Austen

6. “Leaders are not, as we are often led to think, people who go along with huge crowds following them. Leaders are people who go their own way without caring, or even looking to see, whether anyone is following them. "Leadership qualities" are not the qualities that enable people to attract followers, but those that enable them to do without them. They include, at the very least, courage, endurance, patience, humor, flexibility, resourcefulness, stubbornness, a keen sense of reality, and the ability to keep a cool and clear head, even when things are going badly. True leaders, in short, do not make people into followers, but into other leaders.” - John Holt

7. “Homeschooling and public schooling are as opposite as two sides of a coin. In a homeschooling environment, the teacher need not be certified, but the child MUST learn. In a public school environment, the teacher MUST be certified, but the child need NOT learn.” - Gene Royer

8. “Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve.” - Roger Lewin

9. “What is most important and valuable about the home as a base for children's growth into the world is not that it is a better school than the schools, but that it isn't a school at all.” - John Holt

10. “To confuse compulsory schooling with equal educational opportunity is like confusing organized religion with spirituality. One does not necessarily lead to the other. Schooling confuses teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new.” - Wendy Priesnitz

11. “Trying to get more learning out of the present system is like trying to get the Pony Express to compete with the telegraph by breeding faster ponies.” - Edward Fiske

12. “School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is.” - Ivan Illich

13. “The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda - a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas ready-made. The aim is to make 'good' citizens, which is to say, docile and uninquisitive citizens.” - H.L. Menchken

14. “Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the mind. Therefore do not use compulsion, but let early education be a sort of amusement; you will then be better able to discover the child's natural bent.” - Plato

15. “Genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us.” - John Taylor Gatto

16. “When freedom prevails, the ingenuity and inventiveness of people creates incredible wealth. This is the source of the natural improvement of the human condition.” - Brian S. Wesbury

17. “You will not reap the fruit of individuality in your children if you clone their education.” - Marilyn Howshall

18. “Thank goodness my education was neglected.” - Beatrix Potter

19. “Self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child's nature.” - Charlotte Mason

20. “The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursing his own education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else.” - John W. Gardner

21. “I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays and have things arranged for them that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas.” - Agatha Christie

22. “Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing. The rest is mere sheep herding.” - Ezra Pound

23. “The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think - rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men.” - James Beattie

24. “It is the mark of a truly educated man to know what not to read.” - Ezra Taft Benson

25. “Unless education promotes character making, unless it helps men to be more moral, more just to their fellows, more law abiding, more discriminatingly patriotic and public spirited, it is not worth the trouble taken to furnish it.” - William Howard Taft

26. “Education does not mean teaching people what they do not know. It means teaching them to behave as they do not behave.” - John Ruskin

27. “We can get too easily bogged down in the academic part of homeschooling, a relatively minor part of the whole, which is to raise competent, caring, literate, happy people.” - Diane Flynn Keith

28. “An eternal question about children is, how should we educate them? Politicians and educators consider more school days in a year, more science and math, the use of computers and other technology in the classroom, more exams and tests, more certification for teachers, and less money for art. All of these responses come from the place where we want to make the child into the best adult possible, not in the ancient Greek sense of virtuous and wise, but in the sense of one who is an efficient part of the machinery of society. But on all these counts, soul is neglected.” - Thomas Moore

29. “The home is the chief school of human virtues.” - William Ellery Channing

30. “As regards moral courage, then, it is not so much that the public schools support it feebly, as that they suppress it firmly.” - G.K. Chesterton

31. “Once upon a time, all children were homeschooled. They were not sent away from home each day to a place just for children but lived, learned, worked, and played in the real world, alongside adults and other children of all ages.” - Rachel Gathercole

32. “Karena kita tidak abadi, namun tulisan kita bisa abadi” - Maria Magdalena

33. “This book is not about "homeschooling" at all. School is an artificial institution contrived by man. This book is about educating a child in the heart of the family given to that child by his Creator.” - Elizabeth Foss

34. “When I look at a child, I see a living, breathing person, made in God's image, for whom God has a plan. As parent educators, we need to embrace a new notion of learning...we need to engage the hearten order to effectively educate the child. Our vision of a well-educated child is a child who has a heart for learning, a child who has the tools he needs to continue to learn for a lifetime and a child who has the love to want to do it.” - Elizabeth Foss

35. “Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
 all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.” - Julia Ward Howe

36. “All governments are ordained by God, but none compare to government by God, theocracy.” - William R. Bowen

37. “It is no wonder that Satan hates the family and has hurled his venom against it in the form of Communism.” - William R. Bowen

38. “Without knowing it, I had stumbled upon one of the basic postulates of homeschooling: Anything you do with a home-schooled child outside the home can be described as a "field trip", thus rendering whatever activity you pursue a legitimate educational experience.” - Quinn Cummings

39. “The process of socialization is nowhere near complete at age five or six, when modern children start spending up to half their waking hours taking their cues from other people's children. Because they accompany their parents' daily routine, homeschooled kids spend plenty of time interacting with people of all ages, which I think most people would agree is a far more natural, organic way to socialize.” - Quinn Cummings

40. “Homeschooling will certainly produce some socially awkward adults, but the odds are good they would have been just as quirky had they spent twelve years raising their hand for permission to go to the bathroom.” - Quinn Cummings

41. “All the homeschooling parents I know meet on a regular basis with other families. They organize field trips, cooking classes, reading clubs and Scout troops. Their children tend to be happy, confident and socially engaged.” - Quinn Cummings

42. “I was shocked, however, to discover that homeschooling is not allowed in the Netherlands. I could only imagine that after legalizing pot, prostitution and gambling, they had to outlaw something.” - Quinn Cummings

43. “At then end of this experiment we call Alice's childhood, I imagine if she's as eager to move ahead with her passions as the graduates I'd just met, and as fond of her family as these kids seemed to be of theirs, I'll have my answer.” - Quinn Cummings

44. “The philosophy of project-based homeschooling — this particular approach to helping children become strong thinkers, learners, and doers — is dependent upon the interest and the enthusiastic participation and leadership of the learners themselves, the children.” - Lori McWilliam Pickert

45. “Allowing children to learn about what interests them is good, but helping them do it in a meaningful, rigorous way is better. Freedom and choice are good, but a life steeped in thinking, learning, and doing is better. It’s not enough to say, “Go, do whatever you like.” To help children become skilled thinkers and learners, to help them become people who make and do, we need a life centered around those experiences. We need to show them how to accomplish the things they want to do. We need to prepare them to make the life they want.” - Lori McWilliam Pickert

46. “Children, even when very young, have the capacity for inventive thought and decisive action. They have worthwhile ideas. They make perceptive connections. They’re individuals from the start: a unique bundle of interests, talents, and preferences. They have something to contribute. They want to be a part of things.It’s up to us to give them the opportunity to express their creativity, explore widely, and connect with their own meaningful work.” - Lori McWilliam Pickert

47. “To learn how to do, we need something real to focus on — not a task assigned by someone else, but something we want to create, something we want to understand. Not an empty exercise but a meaningful, self-chosen undertaking.” - Lori McWilliam Pickert

48. “We cannot continue to send our children to Caesar for their education and be surprised when they come home as Romans.” - Voddie T. Baucham Jr.

49. “The key is to understand that our children don't belong to us—they belong to God. Our goal as parents must not be limited by our own vision. I am a finite, sinful, selfish man. Why would I want to plan out my children's future when I can entrust them to the infinite, omnipotent, immutable, sovereign Lord of the universe? I don't want to tell God what to do with my children—I want Him to tell me!” - Voddie T. Baucham Jr.

50. “Many of our elected officials have virtually handed the keys to our schools over to corporate interests. Presidential commissions on education are commonly chaired by the executives of large companies.” - Alfie Kohn