90 Best Teacher Appreciation Quotes to Thank Your Educators

What do you get teachers who teach well & impact your life? These teacher appreciation quotes can help!

Teachers deserve our gratitude and respect. They dedicate their lives to teaching children and guiding them through life. In return, they receive little recognition.

If you want to show teachers some love and motivation, consider these ways to reward them

• Send a card to the teacher you admire. Customize it according to their qualities, traits & the impact they have had on your life.
• If you just want to thank your teacher, then consider including a quote from the below list, which stands true for every great teacher. 
• It’s important to thank your teachers. Whichever way you do this, make sure to follow through & express your token of love & gratitude!

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100 Best Teacher Appreciation Quotes

1. “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”- Henry Brooks Adams
2. “One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.” – Malala Yousafzai
3. “If you can read this, thank a teacher.”- American Proverb

Related Reading: Powerful Education Quotes for Kids

4. “When educating the minds of our youth, we must not forget to educate their hearts.”- Dalai Lama
5. “A good teacher is like a candle – it consumes itself to light the way for others.”- Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
6. “A teacher is a compass that activates the magnets of curiosity, knowledge, and wisdom in the pupils.”- Ever Garrison
7. “It’s easy to make a buck. It’s a lot tougher to make a difference.” – Tom Brokaw
8. “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” – William Arthur Ward
9. “They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.”- Carl W. Buechner
10. “Children are likely to live up to what you believe of them.” – Lady Bird Johnson
11. “The great teacher is not the man who supplies the most facts, but the one in whose presence we become different people.”- Ralph Waldo Emerson
12. “What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches.” – Karl Menninger
13. “I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.” – Alexander the Great
14. “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
15. “Give me a fish and I eat for a day. Teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime.” – Chinese Proverb
16. “It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.”- Albert Einstein

Related Reading: Thanking a Teacher Note: 30 Tips to Express Love for Your Teachers

17. “Teaching is a very noble profession that shapes the character, caliber, and future of the individual. If the people remember me as a good teacher, that will be the biggest honor for me.” – APJ Abdul Kalam
18. “Nine-tenths of education is encouragement.”- Anatole France
19. “Being able to help someone learn something is a talent.” – Margaret Riel
20. “A good teacher can inspire hope; ignite the imagination, and instill a love of learning.” – Brad Henry
21. “Summer vacation is the time when parents realize teachers are grossly underpaid.”- Unknown
22. “Everyone who remembers his own education remembers teachers, not methods and techniques. The teacher is the heart of the educational system.” – Sidney Hook
23. “Teaching is not just a job. It is a human service, and it must be thought of as a mission.”- Dr. Ralph Tyler
24. “Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher.” – Japanese Proverb
25. “Those who know do. Those who understand, teach.”- Aristotle
26. “To teach is to learn twice.” – Joseph Joubert
27. “What greater or better gift can we offer the republic than to teach and instruct our youth?” – Marcus T. Cicero
28. “One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings.”- Carl Jung
29.  “When we strive to become better teachers than we are, everyone in our classroom becomes better too.”- Robert John Meehan
30. “Great teachers empathize with kids, respect them, and believe that each one has something special that can be built upon.” – Ann Lieberman

Related Reading: Best Inspiring Quotes for Kids to Help Them Skate Through Life

31. “Students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”- John C. Maxwell
32. “Teacher appreciation makes the world of education go around.”  – Helen Peters
33. “Be a wonderful role model because you will be the window through which many children will see their future.” – Thomas Mckinnon
34. “He who opens a school door closes a prison.”  – Victor Hugo
35. “The greatest sign of success for a teacher… is to be able to say, ‘The children are now working as if I did not exist.’”  – Maria Montessori
36. “I can’t believe I just saw my teacher at the grocery store! I thought she lived in her classroom! –Heidi McDonald
37. “The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.” – Khalil Gibran
38. “Anyone who does anything to help a child in his life is a hero to me.”- Fred Rogers (Mister Rogers)
39. “Educators are the only people who lose sleep over other people’s kids.” –Nicholas A. Ferroni
40. “Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.” – Jacques Barzun
41. “Most of us end up with no more than five or six people who remember us. Teachers have thousands of people who remember them for the rest of their lives.” – Andy Rooney
42. “Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre.”  – Gail Godwin
43. “If you have to put someone on a pedestal, put teachers. They are society’s heroes.”- Guy Kawasaki
44. “In order to be an effective teacher, you have to love your students as human beings, and you have to love teaching.”- Maribeth Sublette
45. “Education is the key to success in life, and teachers make a lasting impact in the lives of their students.” – Solomon Ortiz
46. “Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best.” – Bob Talbert
47. “One good teacher in a lifetime may sometimes change a delinquent into a solid citizen.” – Philip Wylie
48. “When you teach your son, you teach your son’s son.”- The Talmud
49. “Teachers teach because they care. Teaching young people is what they do best. It requires long hours, patience, and care.” – Horace Mann
50. “A teacher takes a hand, opens a mind, and touches a heart.”- Unknown
51. “Not all superheroes wear capes; some have teaching degrees.” – Unknown
52. “It takes a big heart to help shape little minds.”- Unknown
53. “Good teachers know how to bring out the best in students.”— Charles Kuralt
54. “Teaching is the profession that teaches all the other professions.” – Unknown
55. “If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.”- John Dewy
56. “Your heart is slightly bigger than the average human heart, but that’s because you’re a teacher.” – Aaron Bacall

Related Reading: Best End of Year Teacher Gifts to Thank Your Educators

57. What a teacher writes on the blackboard of life can never be erased.” – Unknown
58. “A teacher’s job is to take a bunch of live wires and see that they are well-grounded.”- D. Martin
59. “Teaching: the only profession where you steal things from home and bring them to work.” –Unknown
60. “What a gift for any teacher to see the students smile and live up to their potential. That’s the reward. That’s humbling to be a witness to something like that.”- Mary Vallelonga
61. “Cheers to all of the teachers who give out pencils every single day who know that they’ll never get them back.”- Unknown
62. “The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.”- Mark Van Doren
63. “Don’t judge a teacher until you’ve walked a mile in her shoes.”- Unknown
64. “I think the teaching profession contributes more to the future of our society than any other single profession.” – John Wooden
65. “I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.”- Lily Tomlin
66. “The best teachers teach from the heart, not from the book.” – Unknown
67. “Teaching is more than imparting knowledge; it is inspiring change. Learning is more than absorbing facts; it is acquiring understanding.”—William Arthur Ward
68. “Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.” – Josef Albers
69. “Teachers have three loves: love of learning, love of learners, and the love of bringing the first two loves together.” –Scott Hayden
70. “The best teachers are those who show you where to look but don’t tell you what to see.”- Alexandra K. Trenfor
71. “It’s the teacher that makes the difference, not the classroom.” –Michael Morpurgo
72. “Teachers appreciate being appreciated, for teacher appreciation is their highest award.”- William Prince
73. “Teachers can change lives with just the right mix of chalk and challenges.” –Joyce Meyer
74. “The teacher … must have a kind of faith that the child will reveal himself through work.”-  Maria Montessori
75. “To this end, the greatest asset of a school is the personality of the teacher.” –John Strachan
76. “In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.”- Phil Collins
77. “The best teacher of children, in brief, is one who is essentially childlike.” –H. L. Mencken
78. “Without teachers, life would have no class.”- Unknown
79. “Good teachers are the ones who can challenge young minds without losing their own.” –Unknown
80. “A truly amazing teacher is hard to find, difficult to part with, and impossible to forget.”- Unknown
81. “The duties of a teacher are neither few nor small, but they elevate the mind and give energy to the character.” –Dorothea Dix
82. “A teacher nourishes the soul of a child for a lifetime.”- Unknown
83. “A truly special teacher is very wise and sees tomorrow in every child’s eyes.”- Unknown
84. “Teaching is the greatest act of optimism.” –Colleen Wilcox
85. “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
86. “In teaching, you cannot see the fruit of a day’s work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years.” – Jacques Barzun
87. “In the classroom, you’re not just a teacher; you’re a dream builder.” – Unknown
88. “Teachers plant the seeds of knowledge that will grow forever.” – Unknown
89. “Teaching is not about answering questions but about raising questions – opening doors for them in places that they could not imagine.” – Yawar Baig
90. “The influence of a good teacher can never be erased.” – Unknown
91. “Teachers, I believe, are the most responsible and important members of society because their professional efforts affect the fate of the earth.” – Helen Caldicott
92. “The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself.” – Edward Bulwer-Lytton
93. “The art of teaching is to teach, to teach well, and to teach even better.” – Henri Frederic Amiel
94. “A teacher’s purpose is not to create students in his own image, but to develop students who can create their own image.” – Unknown
95. “The influence of teachers extends beyond the classroom, well into the future.” – F. Sionil Jose
96. “The best teachers are those who show you where to look but don’t tell you what to see.” – Alexandra Trenfor
97. “Teaching is the only major occupation of man for which we have not yet developed tools that make an average person capable of competence and performance.” – Peter Drucker
98. “Teaching is not about answers but about questions; not about knowing but about learning; not about the destination but about the journey.” – Glenn Doman
99. “Teachers are the builders of tomorrow.” – Unknown
100. “I am not a teacher, but an awakener.” – Robert Frost

Related Reading: Best Examples for a Thank You Note to Teacher

How to Write a Thank You Message for Your Teacher in 3 Steps

If you want to write an appreciation message for your teacher (or your child’s teacher), there are some simple steps to follow: 

1. Start with a quote from the above list 
2. Personalize the second line to show the value that the teacher has added 
3. End with best wishes 

Here’s an example for you to understand better: 

Someone rightly said – “A truly amazing teacher is hard to find, difficult to part with, and impossible to forget.” I am so glad to have found a teacher like you, someone who inspires me to be better every day. I wish you everything you want because you truly deserve it! 

Hope you’re able to write some great teacher appreciation messages and share them with your best & favorite teachers! 

Conclusion

The world of education thrives on the dedication and passion of teachers, and expressing our gratitude through teacher appreciation words is a small yet powerful way to acknowledge their contribution. As we’ve explored some of the best thank you quotes for teachers and discovered many nice words about teachers, we are reminded of their profound impact on our lives. Their unwavering commitment to nurturing future generations is nothing short of heroic. 

So, let us never underestimate the power of a simple “thank you.” These words of gratitude for teachers are a reminder that behind every successful individual, there’s often an incredible teacher who believes in their potential.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)