Most people can remember at least one teacher who had a particularly positive impact on their lives.  Teachers do indeed shape the future because they educate the leaders of tomorrow.  Men and women in the teaching profession deserve our support and thanks.  So, with that in mind, I have compiled a collection of inspirational quotations for educators.  Please share them with a teacher that you know.  If you teach, then please accept this heart-felt "thank you" for all of the hard and important work that you do. 

"Give me a fish and I eat for a day. Teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime." --Chinese Proverb

"Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee." --Ralph Waldo Emerson

"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge." -- Albert Einstein

"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." -- Henry Brooks Adams

"Modern cynics and skeptics...see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing." --John F. Kennedy

"The beginning is the most important part of the work." Plato

"I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework." -- Lily Tomlin as "Edith Ann"

"A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove . . . . but the world maybe different because I was important in the life of a child." -- Kathy Davis

"It's easy to make a buck. It's a lot tougher to make a difference." Tom Brokaw

"To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching." -- Henri Frederic Amiel

"Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers." Tennyson

"We have an obligation and a responsibility to be investing in our students and our schools. We must make sure that people who have the grades, the desire and the will, but not the money, can still get the best education possible." --Barack Obama

"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

"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

"The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery." -- Mark Van Doren

"One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child." -- Carl Jung

"Great teachers empathize with kids, respect them, and believe that each one has something special that can be built upon." Ann Lieberman

"Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are endless." -- Mother Teresa

"In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day's work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years." -- Jacques Barzun

"By learning you will teach, by teaching you will learn." --Latin Proverb

"I touch the future. I teach." -- Christa McAuliffe

"Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers." -- Josef Albers

"I have been maturing as a teacher. New experiences bring new sensitivities and flexibility..." -- Howard Lester

"By viewing the old we learn the new." Chinese Proverb

"I hear, and I forget. I see, and I remember. I do, and I understand." Chinese Proverb

"Sometimes one man with courage is a majority." Andrew Jackson

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." Albert Einstein

"A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary." -- Thomas Carruthers

A teacher is a compass that activates the magnets of curiosity, knowledge, and wisdom in the pupils. -- Ever Garrison

"Acquire new knowledge whist thinking over the old, and you may become a teacher of other." --Confucius

"Teaching is the profession that teaches all of the other professions." --Author Unknown

"Good teachers are costly, but bad teachers cost more." --Bob Talbert

"Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition." --Jacques Barzun

"Who dares to teach must never cease to learn." --John Cotton Dana

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