76 Inspirational Education Quotes

In the pursuit of knowledge and personal growth, education stands as a beacon of enlightenment and empowerment. It shapes minds, ignites curiosity, and builds the foundation for a brighter future. Whether you're a student, teacher, or lifelong learner, finding inspiration in the world of education can rekindle your passion for learning and motivate you to reach new heights. Our carefully curated collection of the top 76 inspirational education quotes offers wisdom and encouragement from some of the greatest thinkers, educators, and minds throughout history. Let these words serve as a catalyst for your educational journey, sparking renewed enthusiasm and a deeper appreciation for the transformative power of learning.

1. “Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.” - Charlotte Brontë

2. “He who opens a school door, closes a prison.” - Victor Hugo

3. “Only a very few can be learned, but all can be Christian, all can be devout, and – I shall boldly add – all can be theologians.” - Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

4. “Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom. Aristotle speaks plainly to this purpose, saying, 'that the institution of youth should be accommodated to that form of government under which they live; forasmuch as it makes exceedingly for the preservation of the present government, whatsoever it be.” - John Adams

5. “You know, sometimes kids get bad grades in school because the class moves too slow for them. Einstein got D's in school. Well guess what, I get F's!!!” - Bill Watterson

6. “For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.” - Sir Thomas More

7. “Wenn [der Lehrer] wirklich weise ist, fordert er euch nicht auf, ins Haus seiner Weisheit einzutreten, sondern führt euch an die Schwelle eures eigenen Geistes.” - Khalil Gibran

8. “..I met two young guys from the Oregon National Guard... The lieutenant told me about their temporary barracks in an old neighborhood high school. He told me that he was disgusted that kids ever went to school there, and that in Oregon the place would have been bulldozed and rebuilt so that kids could have a proper place to learn. He seemed troubled that all of this was happening in America. He realized that many of the problems he was seeing in New Orleans existed before the storm, and he wanted to know why people had put up with it and why they hadn't voted out of office the people who had let this happen. I told him I didn't know, but maybe we could change things in New Orleans in the future. He seemed hopeful. I felt less certain.” - Billy Sothern

9. “The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.” - Thomas Paine

10. “The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.” - Herbert Spencer

11. “Prison for the crime of puberty -- that was how secondary school had seemed.” - David Brin

12. “Theological formation is the gradual and often painful discovery of God's incomprehensibility. You can be competent in many things, but you cannot be competent in God.” - Henri Nouwen

13. “Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.” - Albert Einstein

14. “A beautiful bright blue sky; up above so high; how happy i am; to feel fully satisfied.” - Santosh Kalwar

15. “Why not spend that time on art: painting, sculpting, charcoal, pastel, oils? Are words or numbers more important than images? Who decides this? Does algebra move you to tears? Can plural possessives express the feelings in your heart? If you don't learn art now, you will never learn to breathe!” - Laurie Halse Anderson

16. “My mother delayed my enrollment in the Fascist scouts, the Balilla, as long as possible, firstly because she did not want me to learn how to handle weapons, but also because the meetings that were then held on Sunday mornings (before the Fascist Saturday was instituted) consisted mostly of a Mass in the scouts' chapel. When I had to be enrolled as part of my school duties, she asked that I be excused from the Mass; this was impossible for disciplinary reasons, but my mother saw to it that the chaplain and the commander were aware that I was not a Catholic and that I should not be asked to perform any external acts of devotion in church. In short, I often found myself in situations different from others, looked on as if I were some strange animal. I do not think this harmed me: one gets used to persisting in one's habits, to finding oneself isolated for good reasons, to putting up with the discomfort that this causes, to finding the right way to hold on to positions which are not shared by the majority. But above all I grew up tolerant of others' opinions, particularly in the field of religion, remembering how irksome it was to hear myself mocked because I did not follow the majority's beliefs. And at the same time I have remained totally devoid of that taste for anticlericalism which is so common in those who are educated surrounded by religion. I have insisted on setting down these memories because I see that many non-believing friends let their children have a religious education 'so as not to give them complexes', 'so that they don't feel different from the others.' I believe that this behavior displays a lack of courage which is totally damaging pedagogically. Why should a young child not begin to understand that you can face a small amount of discomfort in order to stay faithful to an idea? And in any case, who said that young people should not have complexes? Complexes arise through a natural attrition with the reality that surrounds us, and when you have complexes you try to overcome them. Life is in fact nothing but this triumphing over one's own complexes, without which the formation of a character and personality does not happen.” - Italo Calvino

17. “The soul of him who has education is whole and perfect and escapes the worst disease, but, if a man's education be neglected, he walks lamely through life and returns good for nothing to the world below.” - Plato

18. “[Myrnin to Claire about their costumes of Pierrot and Harlequin, respectively]"Don't they teach you anything in your schools?""Not about this.""Pity. I suppose that's what comes of your main education flowing from Google.” - Rachel Caine

19. “Why do I do anything?' she says. 'I'm educated enough to talk myself out of any plan. To deconstruct any fantasy. Explain away any goal. I'm so smart I can negate any dream.” - Chuck Palahniuk

20. “It is among the commonplaces of education that we often first cut off the living root and then try to replace its natural functions by artificial means. Thus we suppress the child's curiosity and then when he lacks a natural interest in learning he is offered special coaching for his scholastic coaching for his scholastic difficulties.” - Alice Duer Miller

21. “The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men. As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. it opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. in moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate. The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound and seen in every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.” - Frederick Douglass

22. “...rather than assuming that education is primarily about preparing for jobs and careers, what would it mean to think of education as a process of guiding kids' participation in public life more generally, a public life that includes social, recreational, and civic engagement.” - Mizuko Ito

23. “Scoring well on tests is the sort of happy thing that gets the school district the greenbacks they crave. Understanding and appreciating the material are secondary.” - Libba Bray

24. “Welcome to Hartford. The poorest city in the wealthiest state in the richest country on earth.” - Susan Eaton

25. “It is my belief...that the talents every child has, regardless of his official 'I.Q,' could stay with him through life, to enrich him and everybody else, if these talents were not regarded as commodities with a value in the success-stakes.” - Doris Lessing

26. “How can the bird that is born for joySit in a cage and sing?How can a child, when fears annoy,But droop his tender wing,And forget his youthful spring?” - William Blake

27. “Mr. Klamp laid down the law. No tardiness, no talking above 40 decibels, no untied shoelaces, no visible undergarments, no eating, no chewing gum, no chewing tobacco, no chewing betel nuts, no chewing coca leaves, no chewing out students (unless Mr. Klamp was doing the chewing out), no chewing out teachers (unless ditto), no unnecessary displays of temper (unless ditto), no unnecessary displays of affection (no exceptions), no pets over one ounce or under one ton, and no singing, except in Bulgarian. I began to think Mr Klamp wouldn't be so bad...” - Polly Shulman

28. “People need to be educated so that they can make intelligent moral choices” - Gary L. Francione

29. “Being able to "go beyond the information" given to "figure things out" is one of the few untarnishable joys of life. One of the great triumphs of learning (and of teaching) is to get things organised in your head in a way that permits you to know more than you "ought" to. And this takes reflection, brooding about what it is that you know. The enemy of reflection is the breakneck pace - the thousand pictures.” - Jerome S. Bruner

30. “Education: learning to find your purpose. Upon finding your purpose: what did I learn?” - Bauvard

31. “Child psychologists have demonstrated that our minds are actually constructed by these thousands of tiny interactions during the first few years of life. We aren't just what we're taught. It's what we experience during those early years - a smile here, a jarring sound there - that creates the pathways and connections of the brain. We put our kids to fifteen years of quick-cut advertising, passive television watching, and sadistic video games, and we expect to see emerge a new generation of calm, compassionate, and engaged human beings?” - Sidney Poitier

32. “The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.” - Diogenes

33. “...anyone still attempting to argue that Ebonics is a problem for black students or that it is somehow connected to a lack of intelligence or lack of desire to achieve is about as useful as a Betamax video cassette player, and it's time for those folks to be retired, be they teachers, administrators, or community leaders, so the rest of us can try to do some real work in the service of equal access for black students and all students. (15)” - Adam J. Banks

34. “The best book is not one that informs merely, but one that stirs the reader up to inform himself.” - A.W. Tozer

35. “What all good teachers have in common, however, is that they set high standards for their students and do not settle for anything less.” - Marva Collins

36. “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

37. “You musn't neglect your education in favor of your studies.” - Nick O'Donohoe

38. “In large part, we are teachers precisely because we remember what it was like to be a student. Someone inspired us. Someone influenced us. Or someone hurt us. And we’ve channeled that joy (or pain) into our own unique philosophies on life and learning and we’re always looking for an opportunity to share them—with each other, our students, parents, or in our communities.” - Tucker Elliot

39. “We will continue to chase rainbows unless we recognize that they are rainbows and there is no pot of gold at the end of them.” - Diane Ravitch

40. “The habit of looking at life as a social relation — an affair of society — did no good. It cultivated a weakness which needed no cultivation. If it had helped to make men of the world, or give the manners and instincts of any profession — such as temper, patience, courtesy, or a faculty of profiting by the social defects of opponents — it would have been education better worth having than mathematics or languages; but so far as it helped to make anything, it helped only to make the college standard permanent through life.” - Henry Adams

41. “A teacher will be frustrated if she is only motivated to teach what she has learned. Yet, if she is motivated because of the students, then she will learn from them how to teach.” - Tanya R. Liverman

42. “Great teachers will never be able to make up for bad parents, nor should they be expected to.” - Taylor Mali

43. “That's what teaching is, the art of explanation: presenting the right information in the right order in a memorable way.” - Taylor Mali

44. “The shiny paint laid on by curiosity's hand has worn off. What thing better can a man know than the love of Christ, which passes knowledge?” - Jim Elliot

45. “I'm as proud of my inconsistencies as I am my consistencies.” - Myles Horton

46. “We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish,we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need whenwe come to man's estate, is the gift of education.” - Jean Jacques Rousseau

47. “Most of my friends from Columbia are going on to get advanced degrees. And why not? A Ph.D. is the new M.A., a master's is the new bachelor's, a B.A. is the new high school diploma, and a high school diploma is the new smiley-face sticker on your first-grade spelling test.” - Megan McCafferty

48. “It was a bland, tranquilized, life-adjusted, group-integrated sort of face -- the face turned out in thousands of copies every year by the educational production lines on Terra.” - H. Beam Piper

49. “worksheets - the archenemy of abundant, purposeful reading (and discussion and writing).” - Mike Schmoker

50. “When we unnecessarily elongate the process of "learning to read," we postpone "reading to learn" - learning itself - by years.” - Mike Schmoker

51. “The child, unhampered, does not waste time.” - Caroline Pratt

52. “Too often we forget that discipline really means to teach, not to punish. A disciple is a student, not a recipient of behavioural consequences.” - Daniel J. Siegel

53. “What do I miss, as a human being, if I have never heard of the Second Law of Thermodynamics? The answer is: Nothing. And what do I miss by not knowing Shakespeare? Unless I get my understanding from another source, I simply miss my life. Shall we tell our children that one thing is as good as another-- here a bit of knowledge of physics, and there a bit of knowledge of literature? If we do so, the sins of the fathers will be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation, because that normally is the time it takes from the birth of an idea to its full maturity when it fills the minds of a new generation and makes them think by it.Science cannot produce ideas by which we could live.” - E.F. Schumacher

54. “Teaching kids how to feed themselves and how to live in a community responsibly is the center of an education.” - Alice Waters

55. “Opportunities for education should be within the reach of every individual, not for the lucky few.” - Elbert Hubbard

56. “A substandard education will always result in a substandard nation.” - Aubrey Priest

57. “Formal education makes you a living, self-education makes you a legend.” - Habeeb Akande

58. “I began with the desire to speak with the dead.” - Stephen Greenblatt

59. “Today we have a weakness in our education process in failing to understand the natural associations between the disciplines. We tend to study all our disciplines in unrelated parallel lines. This tends to be true in both Christian and secular education. This is one of the reasons why evangelical Christians have been taken by surprise at the tremendous shift that has come in our generation.” - Francis A. Schaeffer

60. “What grinds me the most is we're sending kids out into the world who don't know how to balance a checkbook, don't know how to apply for a loan, don't even know how to properly fill out a job application, but because they know the quadratic formula we consider them prepared for the world`With that said, I'll admit even I can see how looking at the equation x -3 = 19 and knowing x =22 can be useful. I'll even say knowing x =7 and y= 8 in a problem like 9x - 6y= 15 can be helpful. But seriously, do we all need to know how to simplify (x-3)(x-3i)??And the joke is, no one can continue their education unless they do. A student living in California cannot get into a four-year college unless they pass Algebra 2 in high school. A future psychologist can't become a psychologist, a future lawyer can't become a lawyer, and I can't become a journalist unless each of us has a basic understanding of engineering.Of course, engineers and scientists use this shit all the time, and I applaud them! But they don't take years of theater arts appreciation courses, because a scientist or an engineer doesn't need to know that 'The Phantom of the Opoera' was the longest-running Broadway musical of all time.Get my point?” - Chris Colfer

61. “من كان مرباه بالعسف والقهر من المتعلمين أو المماليك أو الخدم سطا به القهر، وضيّق على النفس فى انبساطها، وذهب بنشاطها، ودعاه إلى الكسل، وحُمِلَ على الكذب والخبث وهو التظاهر بغير ما فى ضميره خوفـًا من انبساط الأيدى بالقهر عليه، وعلّمه المكر والخديعة لذلك، وصارت له هذه عادةً وخُلُقـًا، وفسدت معانى الإنسانية التى له من حيث الاجتماع والتمرن، وهى الحَمِية والمدافعة عن نفسه ومنزله، وصار عيالاً على غيره فى ذلك، بل وكسلت النفس عن اكتساب الفضائل والخُلُق الجميل، فانقبضت عن غايتها ومدى إنسانيتها، فارتكس وعاد فى أسفل السافلين.” - ابن خلدون

62. “No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set you free.” - Assata Shakur

63. “Some people get an education without going to college. The rest get it after they get out.” - Mark Twain

64. “I’m learning men cannot teach men to build their castles with bricks. time must do that.” - Darnell Lamont Walker

65. “The key distinctive of a truly Christian education...is the effective practice of worldview integration, that is, an approach to biblical integration that leads to a Christian worldview.” - Martha MacCullough

66. “I am no advocate of senseless and excessive cramming in studies, but a boy should work, and should work hard, at his lessons -- in the first place, for the sake of what he will learn, and in the next place, for the sake of the effect upon his own character of resolutely settling down to learn it. Shiftlessness, slackness, indifference in studying, are almost certain to mean inability to get on in other walks of life.” - Theodore Roosevelt

67. “Read to lead in order to succeed.” - Habeeb Akande

68. “When we look back, it becomes clear that the acts and accomplishments of human beings are the signatures of history. Human signatures have created an enormous chasm between the joyeous light of the age of the Renaissance to the dark shadow of September 11, 2001. Those of us living on that fateful day experienced the lower depths of mankind. As an author, avid reader, world traveler, and person of enormous curiosity, my life experiences have taught me that discord often erupts from a lack of knowledge and education. To discourage future dark moments, I believe we must nourish the minds of our young with learning that creates understanding between ethnic and religious groups. Perhaps understanding will lead to a marvelous day when we take a last fleeting look at violence so harmful to so many. I sincerely believe that nothing will further the cause of peace more than the education of our young. I would like for readers to know that a percentage of the profits from the sale of this book will be devoted to the cause of education.May all roads lead to peace.” - Jean Sasson

69. “Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.” - John Dewey Polt

70. “Education is political.” - Noel Castree

71. “This is who I was, before I was dead. When I cared, when I was relentless.” - Tucker Elliot

72. “If I can be perfectly blunt, his humanities teacher was an ass.” - Tucker Elliot

73. “I felt so much pride, so much love. You get a handful of days like this in a lifetime. Take in every minute. They’ll be over soon enough, and you never know what tomorrow will bring.” - Tucker Elliot

74. “Military life is hard, even cruel—especially for the kids.” - Tucker Elliot

75. “The only thing worse than his arrogance was his incompetence. He was a bully, behaving like an ass. I saw Angel though, not him. The memorial was right there, just outside the window. It’s in the flowers, and it makes me angry. Angel liked to sit on the couch, watch TV, eat chips. She hated outside. Maybe I should have been a bully and an ass to Angel’s parents. Maybe Angel and Grace would still be alive if I’d behaved like this piece of shit teacher.” - Tucker Elliot

76. “..English teachers often take a right-wrong stance. I'd rather my students take a thinking stance.” - Jeff Anderson