Quotes in teaching and about teaching

I just thought it would be great to start collecting quotes on teaching.

Why would I, though?

Aren’t people sick and tired with tons of quotes on Social Media? Frankly speaking, I’m one of such a weary person. I now skip the quotes whenever they pop up in my news feed.

Though it wasn’t the same until recently. In fact, reading quotes was once my main material for reading. First of all, because I didn’t have longer time for more thoughtful reading. And second of all, I found them really informative and educational: These witty bits of wisdom would cast beams of light onto new sides of life or would let me look at my experience from a new perspective, sometimes bringing irony and grains of sarcasm into the way I treated my own existence. It was a fun and unintrusive way of analyzing my life, so to say, on the go.

The attractiveness of quotes lies in the their uncanny accuracy in capturing the quintessence of things. But sometimes, it’s their arousing controversy that makes you pause and re-condiser your own ideas and believes. That’s why quotes are good conversation starters and are widely used in teaching, especially in language teaching.

All these considerations and also the fact that I sometimes read books on teaching, I thought it would be a good idea to collect some gems of wisdom about teaching as I come across them.

So here I go with the first quote:

Let praise be a feeling, not a judgement. (Tim Murthey, Teaching One-to-One, 1988)

I loved this idea! In fact, it can be applied not only to the teaching context but to a broader number of life situations. And how good it would be to constantly remind yourself to be more genuine and sincere in expressing your emotions!

I’ll be posting other quotes as separate blog posts but they all will be easily accessible under “Quotes on Teaching” category.

Is there a quote on teaching that you particularly like?