Quotes on Teaching

Whenever you hear a politician carry on about what a mess the schools are, be aware that you are looking at the culprit.

Algebra is the intellectual instrument which has been created for rendering clear the quantitative aspects of the world.

Besides language and music, it [mathematics] is one of the primary manifestations of the free creative power of the human mind, and it is the universal organ for world understanding through theoretical construction. Mathematics must therefore remain an essential element of the knowledge and abilities which we have to teach, of the culture we have to transmit, to the next generation.

The calculus was the first achievement of modern mathematics and it is difficult to overestimate its importance. I think it defines more unequivocally than anything else the inception of modern mathematics; and the system of mathematical analysis, which is its logical development, still constitutes the greatest technical advance in exact thinking.

Figures don't lie, but liars figure.

As one reads mathematics, one needs to have an active mind, asking questions, forming mental connections between the current topic and other ideas from other contexts, so as to develop a sense of the structure, not just familiarity with a particular tour through the structure.

Geometry is the foundation of all painting.

I have just been to a city in the West, a city full of poets, a city they have made safe for poets. The whole city is so lovely that you do not have to write it up to make it poetry; it is ready-made for you. But, I don't know - the poetry written in that city might not seem like poetry if read outside of the city. It would be like the jokes made when you were drunk; you have to get drunk again to appreciate them.

It takes a great deal of living to get a little deal of learning.

Everybody calls "clear" those ideas which have the same degree of confusion as his own.

The teaching of the church, theoretically astute, is a lie in practice and a compound of vulgar superstitions and sorcery.

They call it coaching but it is teaching. You do not just tell them...you show them the reasons.

The function of the child is to live his own life - not the life that his anxious parents think he should live.

Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.

In the end, excellence in education means excellence in teaching, and if this country would give the status to first grade teachers that we give to full professors, this one act alone would revitalize the nation's schools.

You learn more quickly under the guidance of experienced teachers. You waste a lot of time going down blind alleys if you have no one to lead you.

I have assured His Majesty that our war is against evil, not against Islam. There are thousands of Muslims who proudly call themselves Americans, and they know what I know - that the Muslim faith is based upon peace and love and compassion. The exact opposite of the teachings of the al Qaeda organization, which is based upon evil and hate and destruction.

It is time enough, for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere [in the propagation of religious teachings] when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order.

There is no better way to learn than to teach.

A good teacher, like a good entertainer first must hold his audience's attention, then he can teach his lesson.

Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.