Quotes about pupil (200 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“The secret of sound education is to get each pupil to learn for himself, instead of instructing him by driving knowledge into him on a stereotyped system.”

Robert Baden-Powell (1857–1941) lieutenant-general in the British Army, writer, founder and Chief Scout of the Scout Movement

The Scouter http://www.thedump.scoutscan.com/outlook.html (January, 1912)

Secret , Education , Knowledge , Learning

“The teacher should not assume that he/she is always correct, or try to make the worst cases appear reasonable before his pupils. On the other hand, the teacher should accept the corrections as much as they love to do it to others.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Teachers , Appearance , Love

“Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Nature , Thinking , Learning

“A good teacher protects his pupils from his own influence.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Teachers

“Poor is the pupil that does not surpass his master.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), I Prolegomena and General Introduction to the Book on Painting

“We see a friend’s eye as one and indivisible. A stranger’s eye we take in part by part: the white, the iris, and the pupil.”

Malcolm de Chazal (1902–1981) Mauritian artist

Sens-plastique

Parting

“"What really is the point of trying to teach anything to anybody?"
This question seemed to provoke a murmur of sympathetic approval from up and down the table.
Richard continued, "What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that's really the essence of programming. By the time you've sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you've learned something about it yourself."”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987)

Stupidity , Way , Idea , Understanding

“In Randori we teach the pupil to act on the fundamental principles of Judo, no matter how physically inferior his opponent may seem to him, and even if by sheer strength he can easily overcome him”

Kanō Jigorō (1860–1938) Japanese educator and judoka

"Judo: The Japanese Art of Self Defense", as translated in A Complete Guide to Judo : It's Story and Practice (1958) by Robert W. Smith http://www.judoinfo.com/kano2.htm
Context: In Randori we teach the pupil to act on the fundamental principles of Judo, no matter how physically inferior his opponent may seem to him, and even if by sheer strength he can easily overcome him; because if he acts contrary to principle his opponent will never be convinced of defeat, no matter what brute strength he may have used.

“The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Depressing , God , Soul , Light

“One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Teachers

“Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.”

Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) French Romantic composer

Le temps est un grand maître, dit-on; le malheur est qu'il soit un maître inhumain qui tue ses élèves.
Letter written in November 1856, published in Pierre Citron (ed.) Correspondance générale (Paris: Flammarion, 1989) vol. 5, p. 390; Paul Davies About Time: Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996) p. 214.

Teachers , Time

“I'm going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become.”

Jean Paul Sartre No Exit

Source: No Exit

Smile

“I will sit in the pupil of your eyes and that will carry your sight into the heart of the things”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Heart

“Antisthenes … said once to a youth from Pontus who was on the point of coming to him to be his pupil, and was asking him what things he wanted, "You want a new book, and a new pen, and a new tablet;" - meaning a new mind.”

Antisthenes (-444–-365 BC) Greek philosopher

§ 4
From Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius

Books , Youth

““Culture” means … the cultivation of the mind, the taking care and improving of the native faculties of the mind in accordance with the nature of the mind. Just as the soil needs cultivators of the soil, the mind needs teachers. But teachers are not as easy to come by as farmers. The teachers themselves are pupils and must be pupils. But there cannot be an infinite regress: ultimately there must be teachers who are not in turn pupils. Those teachers who are not in turn pupils are the great minds.”

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism

“What is liberal education,” p. 3
Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968)

Nature , Teachers

“I am showing my pupils details of an immense landscape which they cannot possibly know their way around.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 56e

Way

“It is of course a familiar precept that the teacher must try to arouse the interest of his pupils in all that he teaches. However, this precept is generally meant and understood to denote the idea that learning is the end and interest the means to attain it. I wish to reverse that relationship. Learning must serve the purpose of creating interest. Learning is transient, but interest must be lifelong.”

Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776–1841) German philosopher, psychologist, and founder of pedagogy as an academic discipline

Herbart (1982c, p. 97), as cited in: Norbert Hilgenheger, "Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841)." Kwartalnik Pedagogiczny 3-4 (1999): 5-26.

Idea , Learning , Teachers

“310. A pupil and a teacher. The pupil will not let anything be explained to him, for he continually interrupts with doubts, for instance as to the existence of things, the meaning for words, etc. The teacher says "Stop interrupting me and do as I tell you. So far your doubts don't make sense at all."”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book On Certainty

On Certainty (1969)

Sense , Teachers

“Infant prodigies do not necessarily become great musicians. I have had over three thousand pupils, and I am convinced that the proficiency which some display is no more than a manifestation of dexterity and an extraordinary natural imitative faculty of children.”

Alfred Cortot (1877–1962) Franco-Swiss pianist and conductor

"Do Infant Prodigies Become Great Musicians?", Music & Letters (Apr., 1935)

Children , Nature

“[Aristotle] was the most eminent of all the pupils of Plato…. He seceded from Plato while he was still alive; so that they tell a story that [Plato] said, "Aristotle has kicked us off, just as chickens do their mother after they have been hatched."”

Plato (-427–-347 BC) Classical Greek philosopher

’’The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers’’, Book V, "Life of Aristotle" http://classicpersuasion.org/pw/diogenes/dlaristotle.htm paragraphs II and IV, as translated by C. D. Yonge
In Diogenes Laërtius

“Complete ignorance with regard to certain matters is perhaps the best thing for children; but let them learn very early what it is impossible to conceal from them permanently. Either their curiosity must never be aroused, or it must be satisfied before the age when it becomes a source of danger. Your conduct towards your pupil in this respect depends greatly on his individual circumstances, the society in which he moves, the position in which he may find himself, etc. Nothing must be left to chance; and if you are not sure of keeping him in ignorance of the difference between the sexes till he is sixteen, take care you teach him before he is ten.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau book Emile, or On Education

Emile, or On Education (1762), Book IV

Children , Age , Sex , Learning

“On reaching Athens he fell in with Antisthenes. Being repulsed by him, because he never welcomed pupils, by sheer persistence Diogenes wore him out. Once when he stretched out his staff against him, the pupil offered his head with the words, “Strike, for you will find no wood hard enough to keep me away from you, so long as I think you've something to say."”

Diogenes of Sinope (-404–-322 BC) ancient Greek philosopher, one of the founders of the Cynic philosophy

Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 21,
Quoted by Diogenes Laërtius

Thinking

“All relationships of people to each other rest, as a matter of course, upon the precondition that they know something about each other. The merchant knows that his correspondent wants to buy at the lowest price and to sell at the highest price. The teacher knows that he may credit to the pupil a certain quality and quantity of information. Within each social stratum the individual knows approximately what measure of culture he has to presuppose in each other individual.”

Georg Simmel (1858–1918) German sociologist, philosopher, and critic

Source: The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies (1906), p. 441: First lines of the article.

People , Teachers

“But for Socrates, tragedy did not even seem to "tell what's true", quite apart from the fact that it addresses "those without much wit", not the philosopher: another reason for giving it a wide berth. Like Plato, he numbered it among the flattering arts which represent only the agreeable, not the useful, and therefore required that his disciples abstain most rigidly from such unphilosophical stimuli — with such success that the young tragedian, Plato, burnt his writings in order to become a pupil of Socrates.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Birth of Tragedy

Nun aber schien Sokrates die tragische Kunst nicht einmal "die Wahrheit zu sagen": abgesehen davon, dass sie sich an den wendet, der "nicht viel Verstand besitzt", also nicht an den Philosophen: ein zweifacher Grund, von ihr fern zu bleiben. Wie Plato, rechnete er sie zu den schmeichlerischen Künsten, die nur das Angenehme, nicht das Nützliche darstellen und verlangte deshalb bei seinen Jüngern Enthaltsamkeit und strenge Absonderung von solchen unphilosophischen Reizungen; mit solchem Erfolge, dass der jugendliche Tragödiendichter Plato zu allererst seine Dichtungen verbrannte, um Schüler des Sokrates werden zu können.
Source: The Birth of Tragedy (1872), p. 68

Art , Success

“I always believed that at some time fate would take from me the terrible effort and duty of educating myself. I believed that, when the time came, I would discover a philosopher to educate me, a true philosopher whom one could follow without any misgiving because one would have more faith in him than one had in oneself. Then I asked myself: what would be the principles by which he would educate you?—and I reflected on what he might say about the two educational maxims which are being hatched in our time. One of them demands that the educator should quickly recognize the real strength of his pupil and then direct all his efforts and energy and heat at them so as to help that one virtue to attain true maturity and fruitfulness. The other maxim, on the contrary, requires that the educator should draw forth and nourish all the forces which exist in his pupil and bring them to a harmonious relationship with one another. … But where do we discover a harmonious whole at all, a simultaneous sounding of many voice in one nature, if not in such men as Cellini, men in whom everything, knowledge, desire, love, hate, strives towards a central point, a root force, and where a harmonious system is constructed through the compelling domination of this living centre? And so perhaps these two maxims are not opposites at all? Perhaps the one simply says that man should have a center and the other than he should also have a periphery? That educating philosopher of whom I dreamed would, I came to think, not only discover the central force, he would also know how to prevent its acting destructively on the other forces: his educational task would, it seemed to me, be to mould the whole man into a living solar and planetary system and to understand its higher laws of motion.”

Friedrich Nietzsche Untimely Meditations

“Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.2, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), pp. 130-131
Untimely Meditations (1876)

Love , Men , Hate , Fate

“The philosopher must teach these pupils [French students] that it is far less essential to understand nature than to enjoy and respect its laws; that these laws are both wise and simple; that they are written in all human hearts, and that one need merely question a heart in order to appreciate its impulses.”

Marquis de Sade Philosophy in the Bedroom

Yet Another Effort, Frenchmen, If You Would Become Republicans
Philosophy in the Bedroom (1795)

Law , Understanding , Question , Nature

“A teacher who can show good, or indeed astounding results while he is teaching, is still not on that account a good teacher, for it may be that, while his pupils are under his immediate influence, he raises them to a level which is not natural to them, without developing their own capacities for work at this level, so that they immediately decline again once the teacher leaves the schoolroom.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 43e

Nature , Teachers

“Educators ought to know better than their pupils what an education is. If the educators do not, they have wasted their lives. The art of teaching consists in large part of interesting people in things that ought to interest them, but do not. The task of educators is to discover what an education is and then to invent the methods of interesting their students in it.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

People , Education , Art , Parting

“At Weimar [ the Bauhaus art school I have radically overturned everything. This is the famous academy, which now has the most modern teachers! I have talked to the pupils every evening and I have infused the poison of the new spirit everywhere. De Stijl will soon be published again and more radically. I have mountains of strength, and I know now that our notions will be victorious over everyone and everything.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote of Van Doesburg, in a letter to B. Kok, 7 January, 1921; as cited in the Stijl Catalogue, 1951, p. 45
1920 – 1926

School , Art , Mountain , Teachers

“The one sure way to have secured the defeat of every good principle worth fighting for would have been to have permitted the fight to be changed into one along sectarian lines and inspired by the spirit of sectarian bitterness, either for the purpose of putting into public life or of keeping out of public life the believers in any given creed. Such conduct represents an assault upon Americanism. The man guilty of it is not a good American. I hold that in this country there must be complete severance of Church and State; that public moneys shall not be used for the purpose of advancing any particular creed; and therefore that the public schools shall be non-sectarian. As a necessary corollary to this, not only the pupils but the members of the teaching force and the school officials of all kinds must be treated exactly on a par, no matter what their creed; and there must be no more discrimination against Jew or Catholic or Protestant than discrimination in favor of Jew, Catholic or Protestant. Whoever makes such discrimination is an enemy of the public schools.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)
Context: For thirty-five years I have been more or less actively engaged in public life, in the performance of my political duties, now in a public position, now in a private position. I have fought with all the fervor I possessed for the various causes in which with all my heart I believed; and in every fight I thus made I have had with me and against me Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. There have been times when I have had to make the fight for or against some man of each creed on ground of plain public morality, unconnected with questions of public policy. There were other times when I have made such a fight for or against a given man, not on grounds of public morality, for he may have been morally a good man, but on account of his attitude on questions of public policy, of governmental principle. In both cases, I have always found myself 4 fighting beside, and fighting against, men of every creed. The one sure way to have secured the defeat of every good principle worth fighting for would have been to have permitted the fight to be changed into one along sectarian lines and inspired by the spirit of sectarian bitterness, either for the purpose of putting into public life or of keeping out of public life the believers in any given creed. Such conduct represents an assault upon Americanism. The man guilty of it is not a good American. I hold that in this country there must be complete severance of Church and State; that public moneys shall not be used for the purpose of advancing any particular creed; and therefore that the public schools shall be non-sectarian. As a necessary corollary to this, not only the pupils but the members of the teaching force and the school officials of all kinds must be treated exactly on a par, no matter what their creed; and there must be no more discrimination against Jew or Catholic or Protestant than discrimination in favor of Jew, Catholic or Protestant. Whoever makes such discrimination is an enemy of the public schools.

Life , Money , School , Way

“A natural talent is required; for, when Nature opposes, everything else is in vain; but when Nature leads the way to what is most excellent, instruction in the art takes place, which the student must try to appropriate to himself by reflection, becoming an early pupil in a place well adapted for instruction. He must also bring to the task a love of labor and perseverance, so that the instruction taking root may bring forth proper and abundant fruits.”

Hippocrates (-460–-370 BC) ancient Greek physician

2.
The Law

Love , Art , Way , Nature

“As soon as we have contrived to give our pupil an idea of the word "Useful," we have got an additional means of controlling him, for this word makes a great impression on him, provided that its meaning for him is a meaning relative to his own age, and provided he clearly sees its relation to his own well-being. This word makes no impression on your scholars because you have taken no pains to give it a meaning they can understand, and because other people always undertake to supply their needs so that they never require to think for themselves, and do not know what utility is. "What is the use of that?"”

Jean Jacques Rousseau book Emile, or On Education

Emile, or On Education (1762), Book III

Pain , People , Age , Idea

“His tired gaze - from passing endless bars -
has turned into a vacant stare which nothing holds.
To him there seem to be a thousand bars,
and out beyond these bars exists no world. His supple gait, the smoothness of strong strides
that gently turn in ever smaller circles
perform a dance of strength, centered deep within
a will, stunned, but untamed, indomitable. But sometimes the curtains of his eyelids part,
the pupils of his eyes dilate as images
of past encounters enter while through his limbs
a tension strains in silence
only to cease to be, to die within his heart.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book The Panther

Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehen der Stäbe
so müd geworden, daß er nichts mehr hält.
Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe
und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt.<p>Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte,
der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht,
ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte,
in der betäubt ein großer Wille steht.<p>Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille
sich lautlos auf—. Dann geht ein Bild hinein,
geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille—
und hört im Herzen auf zu sein.
As translated by Albert Ernest Flemming
Der Panther (The Panther) (1907)

World , Strong , Silence , Past

“When God means you to be a healer he sends you patients; when he makes you a teacher he sends you pupils; when he destines you to be a Master he sends you stories.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 112

God , Teachers

“Let no one think that I am dying of grief over my own dismal and ruined state. The sorrow that I feel, I can not at all express; but I can give a hint of it. From among those of the English community who were murdered at the hands of those disgraced ["black-faced"] black ones, one was my patron, and one was my well-wisher, and one my friend, and one my supporter, and one my pupil. Among the Hindustanis, some dear ones, some friends, some pupils, some beloveds. Thus every one of them was mingled with the dust. How harsh is the mourning for one dear one! He who would be a mourner for so many dear ones— how could his life not be difficult? Alas! So my friends died that now when I die, there would not even be anyone left to mourn for me.”

Ghalib (1797–1869) Urdu-Persian poet

Letter to Munshi Hargopal Tafta, 17/18 July, 1858
Quotes from Letters

Life , Feeling , Communication , Support

“At first our pupil had merely sensations, now he has ideas; he could only feel, now he reasons. For from the comparison of many successive or simultaneous sensations and the judgment arrived at with regard to them, there springs a sort of mixed or complex sensation which I call an idea. The way in which ideas are formed gives a character to the human mind. The mind which derives its ideas from real relations is thorough; the mind which relies on apparent relations is superficial. He who sees relations as they are has an exact mind; he who fails to estimate them aright has an inaccurate mind; he who concocts imaginary relations, which have no real existence, is a madman; he who does not perceive any relation at all is an imbecile. Clever men are distinguished from others by their greater or less aptitude for the comparison of ideas and the discovery of relations between them. Simple ideas consist merely of sensations compared one with another. Simple sensations involve judgments, as do the complex sensations which I call simple ideas. In the sensation the judgment is purely passive; it affirms that I feel what I feel. In the percept or idea the judgment is active; it connects, compares, it discriminates between relations not perceived by the senses. That is the whole difference; but it is a great difference. Nature never deceives us; we deceive ourselves.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau book Emile, or On Education

Emile, or On Education (1762), Book III

Men , Way , Feeling , Spring

“.. learn to draw: that's where most of you [Troyon's pupils] are falling down today…. draw with all your might; you can never learn to much. However, don’t neglect painting, go to the country from time to time and make studies and above all develop them..' [Monet is quoting in his letter Troyon, a friend of Boudin in Paris]”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

in a letter to , 1859; as quoted in Discovering Art, – The life time and work of the World's greatest Artists, MONET; K.E. Sullivan, Brockhamptonpress, London 2004, p. 11
1850 - 1870

Quotes , Study , Learning , Time

“I astonished Kalkbrenner, who at once asked me, was I not a pupil of Field, because I have Cramer's method and Field's touch.”

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Polish composer

That delighted me.
His letter to Tytus Woyciechowski in Poturzyn. Paris, 12 December 1831.

“Would you like to know, for instance, to what extent higher mathematics is used in our two great industries? Well, it is never used at all. Having found this to be the case in my own experience, after quite a long career, I wondered whether I was not an exception; so I made enquiries, and I found that it was a general rule that neither engineers nor managers used higher mathematics in carrying out their duties. We must, of course, learn mathematics that goes without saying but the question is how much must we learn? Up to the present this point has nearly always been decided simply by professors, but it seems to me to be a question in which professors do not count very much, and in which they count less as they become more learned and more devoted to their work. They would like to pass on all their scientific knowledge and they find that their pupils always leave them too soon.”

Henri Fayol (1841–1925) Developer of Fayolism

Source: Henri Fayol addressed his colleagues in the mineral industry, 1900, p. 909

Mathematics , Question , Knowledge , Learning

“Pupil, puppet, person, eye. It is not my mirror.”

Ivan Illich (1926–2002) austrian philosopher and theologist

We the People interview (1996)
Context: I want to just go back to a great rabbinical and also, as you see, monastic, Christian development beyond what the Greeks like Plato or Cicero already knew about friendship. That it is from your eye that I find myself. There's a little thing there. They called it pupilla, a "puppet" of myself which I can see in your eye. The black thing in your eye.
Pupil, puppet, person, eye. It is not my mirror. It is you making me the gift of that which Ivan is for you. That's the one who says "I" here. I'm purposely not saying, this is my person, this is my individuality, this is my ego. No. I'm saying this is the one who answers you here, whom you have given to him.

Personality

“Men of science in former ages worked in secret, and instead of publishing their discoveries, taught them in secret to carefully selected pupils. Their motives for adopting that policy are readily intelligible, even if the merits of the policy may seem still open to discussion. At all events, their teaching has not been forgotten; it has been transmitted by secret initiation to men of our own time, and while its methods and its practical achievements remain secrets in their hands, it is open to any patient and earnest student of the question to satisfy himself that these methods are of supreme efficacy, and these achievements far more admirable than any yet standing to the credit of modern science.”

Alfred Percy Sinnett book The Occult World

Introduction
The Occult World

Time , Question , Intelligence , Secret

“In such a world, the last thing a teacher needs to give her pupils is more information. They already have far too much of it. Instead, people need the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant, and above all to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world.”

Yuval Noah Harari book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

People , Teachers , Sense , World

“To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul. To Miss Mackay it is a putting in of something that is not there, and that is not what I call education, I call it intrusion.”

Muriel Spark book The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Source: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), P. 36

Education , Soul

“Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.”

Arthur Koestler (1905–1983) Hungarian-British author and journalist

Source: Drinkers of Infinity: Essays 1955-1967 (1967).

Learning , Teachers

“Her pupils were at once her salvation and her despair. They gave her the means of supporting life, but they made life hardly worth supporting.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Life , Support , Despair

“I clench his hands to the point of pain. "Stay with me."
His pupils contract to pinpoints, dialate again rapidly, and then return to something resembling normalcy. "Always," he murmurs.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Pain

“Your scare me rather. My reflection in the glass never did that; of course, I knew it so well. Like something I had tamed… I'm going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become.”

Jean Paul Sartre No Exit

Source: No Exit

Smile

“It was sometimes inconvenient to have the gold-green, slit-pupilled eyes of a cat, but this was usually easily hidden with a small glamour, and if not, well, there were quite a few ladies-and men-who didn't find it a drawback.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: What Really Happened in Peru

Men , Cats

“Her pupils have taken on a lonely hue, like grey clouds reflected in a calm lake.”

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

Source: After Dark

“The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Secret , Education

“The front door shut, leaving Alec sitting in the half-lit garden, alone. He closed his eyes for a moment, the image of a face hovering behind his lids. Not Jace's face, for a change. The eyes set in the face were green, slit-pupiled. Cat eyes.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Cats , Change

“The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence.”

Amos Bronson Alcott (1799–1888) American teacher and writer

LXXX. TEACHER
Orphic Sayings
Context: The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-trust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciples. A noble artist, he has visions of excellence and revelations of beauty, which he has neither impersonated in character, nor embodied in words. His life and teachings are but studies for yet nobler ideals.

Teachers' Day , Teachers , Personality

“As for myself, I always willingly acknowledge my own self as the principal cause of every good and of every evil which may befall me; therefore I have always found myself capable of being my own pupil, and ready to love my teacher.”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

Memoirs (trans. Machen 1894), book 1, Preface http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/c/casanova/c33m/preface2.html
Referenced
Source: Geschichte Meines Lebens

Love , Teachers , Evil

“The word "education" comes from the root e from ex, out, and duco, I lead. It means a leading out. To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul.”

Muriel Spark book The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Source: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Education , Soul

“The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil. It is not for you to choose what he shall know, what he shall do. It is chosen and foreordained and he only holds the key to his own secret.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Secret , Education

“Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

Source: Ariel

Stupidity

“I've let you teach too many science fiction classes," I said.
Dr. Identity's pupils mutated into large asterisks. "It's possible. More likely, however, I'm just a product of the future. and the future's been extinct for a long time.”

D. Harlan Wilson (1971) novelist

Dr. Identity: or Farewell to Plaquedemia (2007)

Science , Time , Future

“But you say, “by obedience to another he loses his liberty.” How then is it that children suffer the orders of their father and mother, and pupils the injunctions of their instructors?”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

36.
Every Good Man is Free

Children , Suffering

“Those who, like the present writer, never had the privilege of meeting Sidgwick can infer from his writings, and still more from the characteristic philosophic merits of such pupils of his as McTaggart and Moore, how acute and painstaking a thinker and how inspiring a teacher he must have been. Yet he has grave defects as a writer which have certainly detracted from his fame. His style is heavy and involved, and he seldom allowed that strong sense of humour, which is said to have made him a delightful conversationalist, to relieve the uniform dull dignity of his writing. He incessantly refines, qualifies, raises objections, answers them, and then finds further objections to the answers. Each of these objections, rebuttals, rejoinders, and surrejoinders is in itself admirable, and does infinite credit to the acuteness and candour of the author. But the reader is apt to become impatient; to lose the thread of the argument: and to rise from his desk finding that he has read a great deal with constant admiration and now remembers little or nothing. The result is that Sidgwick probably has far less influence at present than he ought to have, and less than many writers, such as Bradley, who were as superior to him in literary style as he was to them in ethical and philosophical acumen. Even a thoroughly second-rate thinker like T. H. Green, by diffusing a grateful and comforting aroma of ethical "uplift", has probably made far more undergraduates into prigs than Sidgwick will ever make into philosophers.”

C. D. Broad (1887–1971) English philosopher

From Five Types of Ethical Theory (1930)

Sense , Strong , Teachers , Reading

“A teacher is frequently the only adult in the pupil's environment who treats him with respect.”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part VI, ch. 29 (Samuel Bester)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

Teachers

“The art of a pedant is to divert his pupils from noticing the smallness of his puddle, and to make them attribute his apparent size to his being a really big toad.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), pp. 91-92

Art

“The duel went on for three days, but it ended in our victory in a matter of seconds. The German was well prepared for it. He had liquidated two Soviet snipers before that. But, with the help of my comrades-in-arms, also snipers whose positions were next to mine, I managed to slay him. I did not know what kind of sniper had been brought to Stalingrad, but when we pulled him out of his shelter we discovered that he was the chief of the school for snipers based in Berlin. On the whole I liquidated 242 Nazis in Stalingrad. My friends and pupils also eliminated many of them. I had trained 30 snipers who killed 1126 Nazis during the war.”

Vasily Zaytsev (1915–1991) Soviet sniper

War , School , Victory , Help

“It was not the "God-intoxicated" philosopher but the hard-headed, not to say hard-hearted, pupil of Machiavelli and philologic-historical critic of the Bible. Orthodoxy could be returned to only if Spinoza was wrong in every respect.”

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism

Preface
Spinoza's Critique of Religion (1965)

God , Heart

“One of the pupils of Artur Schnabel told me that he never heard his teacher practice a difficult passage slowly, but he was struck by the way Schnabel would play one chord of a slow movement over and over, measuring and remeasuring the different components of the harmony.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist (2002), Ch. 2 Listening to the Sound of the Piano

Way , Teachers

“In the second year of my residence in Gottingen, I entered my name for a course of lectures on practical physics, against the advice of all my friends, but I have never regretted so doing, as there never has been, and probably never will be, a greater man at the university than Doctor Schroder, physician to the king, who gave, at that period, his celebrated lectures on practical physics. Schroder himself was astonished at the step I had taken; but when he perceived that I fully understood him, I became one of his favourite pupils; nor had I the advantage alone of receiving private lessons gratis, but he took me with him in most of his professional visits, where I had all the advantages of his great practice. Thus I caught a putrid fever which was then very prevalent; Schroeder attended me day and night, and giving up all hopes of my recovery, he observed to one of his friends, not thinking that I understood what he said, "The expansion of the sinews increases." "Then," answered I, in a quiet manner, "I shall die in four days, according to such and such a rule of Hippocrates: pray, prepare my father to receive the news of my death." However, immediately after, a sudden turn in the disorder taking place, I soon recovered; not so my memory, which I lost for a time, so that I had forgotten the names of my best friends; my nerves were so completely shaken, that I had no wish to recover. After my recovery, Professor Schroeder being himself attacked with the same fever, requested of his wife that no other physician than myself should attend him; but when he became light-headed, she called in all the physicians of Gottingen, and these gentlemen not agreeing in opinion respecting the treatment of the patient, this great and learned man fell a victim to ignorance and jealousy, April 21, 1772. I cannot think of this celebrated and good man without shedding tears of regret and gratitude.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Death , Jealousy , Hope , Thinking

“During his lifetime Gurdjieff did not publish any books on the techniques of his teaching, and his pupils were bound to secrecy on the subject. Since his death in Paris in 1949, however, many of his works have been published, and there has been a flood of memoirs by disciples and admirers. Gurdjieff was in almost ever respect the antithesis of Aleister Crowley. Whereas Crowley craved publicity, Gurdjieff shunned it. Crowley was forgotten for two decades after his death; Gurdjieff on the contrary, has become steadily better known, and his influence continues to grow. One of the main reasons for this is that there was so little of the charlatan about him. He is no cult figure with hordes of gullible disciples. What he has to teach makes an appeal to the intelligence, and can be fully understood only by those who are prepared to make a serious effort.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

They Had Strange Powers (1975)

Death , Books , Intelligence , Effort

“The California Institute of Technology (CalTech) rose to prominence when Robert A. Millikan was called to Pasadena in 1921 as new university president. Millikan was known for his far-reaching ambitions both as a physicist and as a science manager. He put CalTech on the map as a top university by inviting the world's most renowned scientists for guest lectures and by hiring internationally distinguished scientists to new chairs. With theoretical physicist Paul Epstein, a pupil of Sommerfeld's, Millikan brought modern atomic physics to CalTech in the early 1920s, and with Kármán, he pursued the same strategy a few years later in order to lure the best available aerodynamicist from Europe to Pasadena.”

Robert Andrews Millikan (1868–1953) American physicist

[Michael Eckert, The Dawn of Fluid Dynamics: A Discipline Between Science and Technology, https://books.google.com/books?id=GxIUCQ6Yai8C&pg=PA201, 27 June 2007, John Wiley & Sons, 978-3-527-61074-7, 201]

World , Universe , Science

“In 1663 Spinoza published the only work to which he ever set his name… He had prepared a summary of the second part of Descartes' 'Principles of Philosophy' for the use of a pupil… Certain of Spinoza's friends became curious about this manual and desired him to treat the first part of Descartes' work also in the same manner. This was done within a fortnight and Spinoza was then urged to publish the book, which he readily agreed to do upon condition that one of his friends would revise the language and write a preface explaining that the author did not agree with all the Cartesian doctrine… The contents… [included] an appendix of 'Metaphysical Reflections,' professedly written from a Cartesian point of view, but often giving significant hints of the author's real divergence from Descartes….'On this opportunity,' he writes to Oldenburg, 'we may find some persons holding the highest places in my country… who will be anxious to see those other writings which I acknowledge for my own, and will therefore take such order that I can give them to the world without danger of any inconvenience. If it so happens, I doubt not that I shall soon publish something; if not, I will rather hold my peace than thrust my opinions upon men against the will of my country and make enemies of them.'… The book on Descartes excited considerable attention and interest, but the untoward course of public events in succeeding years was unfavourable to a liberal policy, and deprived Spinoza of the support for which he had looked….
If Spinoza had ever been a disciple of Descartes, he had completely ceased to be so… He did not suppose the geometrical form of statement and argument to be an infallible method of arriving at philosophical truth; for in this work he made use of it to set forth opinions with which he himself did not agree, and proofs with which he was not satisfied. We do not know to what extent Spinoza's manual was accepted or taken into use by Cartesians, but its accuracy as an exposition of Descartes is beyond question. One of the many perverse criticisms made on Spinoza by modern writers is that he did not understand the fundamental proposition cogito ergo sum. In fact he gives precisely the same explanation of it that is given by Descartes himself in the Meditations.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

p, 125
Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy (1880)

Men , Truth , Books , World

“Vyasa’s activities in the MBh cover the full range of activities traditionally deemed appropriate for a brahmin. Unquestionably Vyasa is the epic’s foremost expert on the Veda and the ritual activity enjoined by the Veda. Having rearranged the one Veda into four texts, Vyasa taught those to his five pupils along with MBh as the fifth Veda.”

Vyasa central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions

In p,51.
Sources, Seer of the Fifth Veda: Kr̥ṣṇa Dvaipāyana Vyāsa in the Mahābhārata

“College dont amount to much anyhow. A lot of narrow minded, musty old ideas despensed by uninterested teachers to pupils who have come to college for athletics, because they considered it the stylish thing or to keep from going to work.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

From a letter to Edna Mann (October 30, 1926)
Letters

Idea , Teachers

“If you become a teacher, by your pupils you'll be taught.”

Oscar Hammerstein II (1895–1960) American librettist, theatrical producer, and (usually uncredited) theatre director of musicals

"Getting to Know You", The King and I (1956).

Teachers

“I have never believed that the historian should seek to perpetuate the misapprehensions of the past, and it is true that we understand Beethoven today better than his contemporaries did, better, above all, than the generation that immediately followed him, including his own most important pupil, Karl Czerny.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Frontiers of Meaning: Three Informal Lectures on Music (1994), Ch. 2 : How to Become Immortal

Understanding , Past

“So Bertrand Russell once said to me that the pupil in school should study whatever he liked. I asked whether this was not a crime against the pupil. … Should he be allowed to grow up without knowing Shakespeare? … Lord Russell replied that he would require a boy to read one play of Shakespeare; if he did not like it, he should not be compelled to read any more.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

School , Boy , Study , Reading

“A teacher can do very little for a pupil and should only be thankful if he don't hinder him, and the greater the master, mostly the less he can say.”

Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) American painter

Letter to Benjamin Eakins (1869-11-29).

Teachers

“In pursuance of my business and professional studies, I use the naked model.A number of my women pupils have for economy studied from each others' figures, and of these some have obtained from time to time my criticism on their work. I have frequently used as models for myself my male pupils: very rarely female pupils and then only with the knowledge and consent of their mothers.One of the women pupils some years ago gave to her lover who communicated it to Mr. Frank Stephens a list of these pupils as far as she knew them, and since that time Mr. Frank Stephens has boasted to witnesses of the power which this knowledge gave him to turn me out of the Academy, the Philadelphia Sketch Club, & the Academy Art Club, and of his intention to drive me from the city.”

Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) American painter

Letter to Emily Sartain (1886-03-25). Frank Stephens was Eakins' brother-in-law.

Women , Art , Communication , Lovers

“The refractory pupil of Socrates, Aristippus the Cyrene, who believed happiness to be the sum of particular pleasures and golden moments and not, as Epicurus, a prolonged intermediary state between ecstasy and pain.”

Cyril Connolly book Enemies of Promise

Source: Enemies of Promise (1938), Part 1: Predicament, Ch. 5: Anatomy of Dandyism (p.38)

Pain , Pleasure , Happiness

“It has been a general rule for drawing deeds and other legal documents from the earliest times, which one is taught when one first becomes a pupil to a conveyancer, never to change the form of words unless you are going to change the meaning, and it would be as well if those who are engaged in the preparation of Acts of Parliament would bear in mind that that is the real principle of construction.”

Colin Blackburn, Baron Blackburn (1813–1896) British judge

Hadley v. Perks (1866), L. R. 1Q. B. 457.

Change , Time , Drawing

“The curriculum (to a certain extent) and the practice of teaching, ignoring the policy of segregation or apartheid, could not offer preparation for service within the black community. By simply blindly producing pupils formed on a European mould, the vain expectation was created that they, in spite of the said national policy, would still be able to fill posts in the white community. This is that is meant by the unhealthy creation of white collar ideals and the causing of widespread frustration among the so-called learned natives.”

Hendrik Verwoerd (1901–1966) Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 until his assassination in 1966

Verwoerd in 1954, as quoted and translated by J. J. Venter in H.F. Verwoerd: Foundational aspects of his thought https://www.koersjournal.org.za/index.php/koers/article/download/511/636, Koers 64(4) 1999: 415–442

Communication , Learning

“G. I. Gurdjieff's sexual life was strange in its unpredictability. At certain times he led a strict, almost ascetic life, having no relation with women at all. At other times, his sex life seemed to go wild and it must be said that his unbridled periods were more frequent than the ascetic. At times, he had sexual relationships not only with almost any woman who happened to come within the sphere of his influence, but also with his own pupils. Quite a number of his women pupils bore him children and some of them remained closely connected with him all their lives. Others were just as close to him, as far as one could tell, without a sexual relationship.”

John G. Bennett (1897–1974) British mathematician and author

John G. Bennett Gurdjieff: Making a New World (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), pp. 231-232: Cited in " Sexual Beliefs and Practices http://gurdjiefffourthway.org/pdf/sexual.pdf" on gurdjiefffourthway.org, accessed 2013-04-21

Life , Women , Children , Sex

“To amuse is not to teach. The object of teaching is to erect a framework of knowledge in a child's mind and gradually to bring the child as near as may be to the average level of intelligence. Later in life the facts taught by experience and new discoveries will add themselves to this framework. It is wrong to attempt to upset this natural order and to appeal to a child's mind by diverting it with the spectacle of modern life. Teaching by means of pictures, radio, and the cinema is in itself ineffective; these methods must not be used unless they involve (and this is possible) some effort or special enthusiasm. That which is learned without difficulty is soon forgotten, and for the same reason, oral instruction which does not require the pupil's personal participation is almost always rather useless. Eloquence slides in and out of young minds. To listen is not to work.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Naturally this does not apply to the teaching of modern languages.
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Working

Life , Intelligence , Nature , Knowledge

“Scientific "facts" are taught at a very early age and in the very same manner in which religious "facts" were taught only a century ago. There is no attempt to waken the critical abilities of the pupil so that he may be able to see things in perspective. At the universities the situation is even worse, for indoctrination is here carried out in a much more systematic manner. Criticism is not entirely absent. Society, for example, and its institutions, are criticised most severely and often most unfairly… But science is excepted from the criticism. In society at large the judgment of the scientist is received with the same reverence as the judgement of bishops and cardinals was accepted not too long ago. The move towards "demythologization," for example, is largely motivated by the wish to avoid any clash between Christianity and scientific ideas. If such a clash occurs, then science is certainly right and Christianity wrong. Pursue this investigation further and you will see that science has now become as oppressive as the ideologies it had once to fight. Do not be misled by the fact that today hardly anyone gets killed for joining a scientific heresy. This has nothing to do with science. It has something to do with the general quality of our civilization. Heretics in science are still made to suffer from the most severe sanctions this relatively tolerant civilization has to offer.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend (1924–1994) Austrian-born philosopher of science

How To Defend Society Against Science (1975)

Age , Motivation , Idea , Suffering

“The answer Hollywood figured out for this question was what doomed it. It figured out that writers were not to be in charge of creating stories. Instead, a curious tribe of inarticulate Pooh-Bahs called Supervisors and, later, Producers were summoned out of literary nowhere and given a thousand scepters. It was like switching the roles of teacher and pupil in the fifth grade. The result is now history. An industry based on writing had to collapse when the writer was given an errand-boy status.”

Ben Hecht (1894–1964) American screenwriter

from "Elegy for Wonderland", by Ben Hecht, Esquire Magazine, March 1959

History , Boy , Question , Teachers

“As for the piano, I was left to my own devices practically from the age of twelve. As is frequently the case in teachers' families, our parents were so busy with their pupils (literally from morning until late at night) that they hardly had any time for their own children. And that, in spite of the fact that with the favourable prejudice common to all parents, they had a very high opinion of my gifts. (I myself had a much more sober attitude. I was always aware of a great many faults although at times I felt that I had in me something "not quite usual".) But I won't speak of this. As a pianist, I am known. My good and bad points are known and nobody can be interested in my "prehistoric period". I will only say that because of this early "independence" I did a lot of silly things which I could have easily avoided if I had been under the vigilant eye of an experienced and intelligent teacher for another three or four years. I lacked what is known as a "school". I lacked discipline. But it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good; my enforced independence compelled me, though sometimes by very devious ways, to achieve a great deal on my own and even my failures and errors subsequently proved more than once to be useful and educational, and in an occupation such as learning to master an art, where if not all, then almost all depends on individuality, the only sound foundation will always be the knowledge gained as the result of personal effort and personal experience.”

Heinrich Neuhaus (1888–1964) Soviet musician

The Art of Piano Playing (1958), Ch. 1. The Artistic Image of a Musical Composition

Children , Age , Education , School

“What mathematics, therefore are expected to do for the advanced student at the university, Arithmetic, if taught demonstratively, is capable of doing for the children even of the humblest school. It furnishes training in reasoning, and particularly in deductive reasoning. It is a discipline in closeness and continuity of thought. It reveals the nature of fallacies, and refuses to avail itself of unverified assumptions. It is the one department of school-study in which the sceptical and inquisitive spirit has the most legitimate scope; in which authority goes for nothing. In other departments of instruction you have a right to ask for the scholar’s confidence, and to expect many things to be received on your testimony with the understanding that they will be explained and verified afterwards. But here you are justified in saying to your pupil “Believe nothing which you cannot understand. Take nothing for granted.” In short, the proper office of arithmetic is to serve as elementary 268 training in logic. All through your work as teachers you will bear in mind the fundamental difference between knowing and thinking; and will feel how much more important relatively to the health of the intellectual life the habit of thinking is than the power of knowing, or even facility of achieving visible results. But here this principle has special significance. It is by Arithmetic more than by any other subject in the school course that the art of thinking—consecutively, closely, logically—can be effectually taught.”

Joshua Girling Fitch (1824–1903) British educationalist

Source: Lectures on Teaching, (1906), pp. 292-293.

Life , Children , Health , School

“Do not try to make the brilliant pupil a replica of yourself.”

Gilbert Highet (1906–1978) British academic

The Art of Teaching http://books.google.com/books?id=DogFAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Do+not+try+to+make+the+brilliant+pupil+a+replica+of+yourself%22&pg=PA50#v=onepage (1950)

“.. learn to draw: that's where most of you [Troyon's pupils] are falling down today.... draw with all your might; you can never learn to much. However, don't neglect painting, go to the country from time to time and make studies and above all develop them.”

Constant Troyon (1810–1865) French painter

quoted by Monet, in his letter to Boudin, 1859; as quoted in Discovering Art, – The life time and work of the World's greatest Artists, MONET; K.E. Sullivan, Brockhamptonpress, London 2004, p. 11
Monet is quoting in his letter Troyon, who was a good friend of his first art-teacher Eugène Boudin in Le Havre

Study , Learning , Time , Drawing