Quotes about teaching
page 17

Richard Salter Storrs photo
Henry Adams photo
John Desmond Bernal photo

“Hogben's Science for the Citizen would be an admirable text-book for such teaching.”

John Desmond Bernal (1901–1971) British scientist

Source: The Social Function of Science (1939), p. 260

Owain Owain photo
Joe Satriani photo

“I write the songs first and in most cases teach myself the technique second.”

Joe Satriani (1956) American guitar player

As quoted in BAM Magazine (6 April 1990).

Carl Eckart photo
Mary McCarthy photo
Robert E. Lee photo

“Teach him he must deny himself.”

Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War

Lee to a mother who asked him to bless her son, as quoted in R. E. Lee : A Biography, Vol. 4 (1935) by Douglas Southall Freeman, p. 505

Hugo Chávez photo

“Some games teach you to kill. They once put my face on a game, 'You've got to find Chavez to kill him.”

Hugo Chávez (1954–2013) 48th President of Venezuela

Chávez referring to the videogame Mercenaries 2: World in Flames where the player has to kill a Venezuelan general. Quoted in Chavez Sets His Sights On Banks And Barbie http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/15530090
2010

“That teaching according to which intellectual activity is worthy of esteem to the extent that it is practical and to that extent alone.”

Julien Benda (1867–1956) French essayist

Source: Treason of the Intellectuals (1927), p. 151

M. S. Swaminathan photo
Julia Ward Howe photo
Muhammad Ali Jinnah photo
Russell Brand photo
Fred Astaire photo

“First of all, no one can accuse me, Ayad Jamal Aldin, of secatarianism, because I support a secular regime that fully separates religion and the state. […] I believe that my freedom as a Shia and as a religious person will never be complete unless I preserve the freedom of the Sunni, the Christian, the Jew, the Sabai and the Yazidi. We will not be able to preserve the freedom of the mosque unless we preserve the freedom of entertainment clubs. […] The curricula - both the modern ones, in some Arab and Islamic countries, and the books of jurisprudence and heritage - have many flaws that must be fixed once and for all. There are rulings about Ahl al-Dhimma - even if, Allah be praised, no current regime can enforce these rulings. However, just for the sake of amusement and diversion, I recommend that the viewers read the books of jurisprudence, and see how Ahl al-Dhimma are treated. I especially recommend this to people with a lust for Arab and Islamic history, who claim that our history is a source of pride, and that others were treated with kindness and love - especially Christians and Jews. Among these rulings, a Dhimmi must wear a belt, so he would be identifiable. Moreover, it is recommended that he be forced to the narrowest paths, and there are even jurisprudents who say that it is recommended to slap a Christian on the back of his neck so he would feel humiliated and degraded. This is how we harass him and then invite him to join Islam. I can swear that the Prophet Muhammad is innocent of such inhuman jurisprudence. I challenge anyone among the people with a lust for history to talk candidly to the West, to the advocates of human rights, and tell them that our heritage has such evils and flaws. We are a nation of blackout and darkness. We cannot live in the light of day. […] We do not hold ourselves accountable. This is why America came to demand that the Arabs be accountable. We must have more self-confidence and be accountable before others hold us accountable. We must discipline ourselves before the Americans and English discipline us. We must maintain human rights, which we have neglected for 1,300 or 1,400 years, to this day - until the arrival of the Americans, the Christians, the English, the Zionists, the Crusaders - call them what you will. They came to teach you, the followers of Muhammad, how to respect human rights.”

Iyad Jamal Al-Din (1961) Iraqi politician

Sayyed Ayad Jamal Aldin: Sayyed Ayad Jamal Aldin: The Arabs Want Tyrannical Regimes, in Line with Their Backward Culture, LBC TV, July 31, 2005 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_ZKffu6Wsg,

Swami Vivekananda photo
Warren Farrell photo
Gary S. Becker photo
Jane Roberts photo
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo

“You ask which form of government is the best? Whichever teaches us to govern ourselves.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Welche Regierung die beste sei? Diejenige, die uns lehrt, uns selbst zu regieren.
Maxim 353, trans. Stopp
Variant translation by Saunders: Which is the best government? That which teaches us to govern ourselves. (225)
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

Kent Hovind photo
Brigham Young photo

“I very well recollect the reformation which took place in the country among the various denominations of Christians-the Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and others-when Joseph was a boy. Joseph's mother, one of his brothers, and one, if not two, of his sisters were members of the Presbyterian Church, and on this account the Presbyterians hung to the family with great tenacity. And in the midst of these revivals among the religious bodies, the invitation, "Come and join our church," was often extended to Joseph, but more particularly from the Presbyterians. Joseph was naturally inclined to be religious, and being young, and surrounded with this excitement, no wonder that he became seriously impressed with the necessity of serving the Lord. But as the cry on every hand was, "Lo, here is Christ," and "Lo, there!" Said he, "Lord, teach me, that I may know for myself, who among these are right." And what was the answer? "They are all out of the way; they have gone astray, and there is none that doeth good, no not one. When he found out that none were right, he began to inquire of the Lord what was right, and he learned for himself. Was he aware of what was going to be done? By no means. He did not know what the Lord was going to do with him, although He had informed him that the Christian churches were all wrong, because they had not the Holy Priesthood, and had strayed from the holy commandments of the Lord, precisely as the children of Israel did.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses 12:67 (June 23, 1867)
Young’s recollection of religious excitement and events leading up to Joseph Smith, Jr.’s first vision.
1860s

Jane Roberts photo
Kim Stanley Robinson photo
Kevin Kelly photo

“A company cannot be a learning company without also being a teaching company.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995)

Edmond Rostand photo

“Without doubt
I can teach crowing: for I gobble.”

Sans doute
Je peux apprendre à coqueriquer: je glougloute.
Act I, Sc. 2
Chantecler (1910)

Hermann Samuel Reimarus photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo

“Most wretched men
Are cradled into poetry by wrong;
They learn in suffering what they teach in song.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Source: Julian and Maddalo http://www.bartleby.com/139/shel115.html (1819), l. 543

Plutarch photo
Kent Hovind photo
Gabriel Biel photo

“Always in these matters desiring rather to be taught than to teach.”

Gabriel Biel (1418–1495) German canon regular and scholar

Lectio 53.
Expositio Canonis Missae

Mau Piailug photo
Diogenes of Sinope photo

“Self-taught poverty is a help toward philosophy, for the things which philosophy attempts to teach by reasoning, poverty forces us to practice.”

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

Stobaeus, iv. 32a. 11
Quoted by Stobaeus

I. F. Stone photo
Rahul Dravid photo

“No dream is ever chased alone. As I look back, I have many people to thank for teaching me and believing in me. My junior coaches in Bangalore and at various junior national camps inculcated in me a powerful love of the game which has always stayed with me”

Rahul Dravid (1973) Indian cricketer

In press conference announcing retirement from Test cricket, quoted in " After 16 yrs, Rahul Wall Dravid retires from intl cricket" in Indian Express (Indianexpress.com) http://www.indianexpress.com/news/after-16-yrs-rahul-wall-dravid-retires-from-intl-cricket/921750/0

Thomas Carlyle photo
Samuel Bowles photo
Cecil Frances Alexander photo
Edwin Lefèvre photo
Letty Cottin Pogrebin photo

“If family violence teaches children that might makes right at home, how will we hope to cure the futile impulse to solve worldly conflicts with force?”

Letty Cottin Pogrebin (1939) American author, journalist, lecturer, and social justice activist

Source: Family and Politics (1983), Ch. 1

“Words are devils, which may lead a man to pick up a sword; but they can never teach him to use it.”

Mark Rosenfelder American language inventor

A saying by Nyekhen http://www.almeopedia.com/Nyekhen, an early Almean general who became a culture hero
Fictional sayings

Timothy Leary photo

“In the information age, you don't teach philosophy as they did after feudalism. You perform it. If Aristotle were alive today he'd have a talk show.”

Timothy Leary (1920–1996) American psychologist

As quoted in The Best Advice Ever for Teachers (2001) by Charles McGuire and Diana Abitz, p. 57

Alan Charles Kors photo
Sadhguru photo
Harlan F. Stone photo
Sun Myung Moon photo
Muhammad photo

“Everything in existence prays for the forgiveness of the person who teaches the Qur’an - even the fish in the sea.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Usulul Kafi, Volume 3, Page 301
Shi'ite Hadith

J. B. Bury photo
Henry Adams photo

“As a type for study, or a standard for education, Lodge was the more interesting of the two. Roosevelts are born and never can be taught; but Lodge was a creature of teaching — Boston incarnate — the child of his local parentage; and while his ambition led him to be more, the intent, though virtuous, was — as Adams admitted in his own case — restless. An excellent talker, a voracious reader, a ready wit, an accomplished orator, with a clear mind and a powerful memory, he could never feel perfectly at ease whatever leg he stood on, but shifted, sometimes with painful strain of temper, from one sensitive muscle to another, uncertain whether to pose as an uncompromising Yankee; or a pure American; or a patriot in the still purer atmosphere of Irish, Germans, or Jews; or a scholar and historian of Harvard College. English to the last fibre of his thought — saturated with English literature, English tradition, English taste — revolted by every vice and by most virtues of Frenchmen and Germans, or any other Continental standards, but at home and happy among the vices and extravagances of Shakespeare — standing first on the social, then on the political foot; now worshipping, now banning; shocked by the wanton display of immorality, but practicing the license of political usage; sometimes bitter, often genial, always intelligent — Lodge had the singular merit of interesting. The usual statesmen flocked in swarms like crows, black and monotonous. Lodge's plumage was varied, and, like his flight, harked back to race. He betrayed the consciousness that he and his people had a past, if they dared but avow it, and might have a future, if they could but divine it.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

John Lancaster Spalding photo
G. K. Chesterton photo
Ippen photo

“In the Buddha’s teaching, unless you cast away body and life, there can be no realization of benefit.”

Ippen (1239–1289) Japanese Buddhist monk, founder of the Jishu school.

"Words Handed Down by Disciples" (Chapter 9, p. 105).
No Abode: The Record of Ippen (1997)

Robert B. Laughlin photo

“No man has yet appreciated all that is involved in Jesus' teaching regarding God.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Source: Something More, A Consideration of the Vast, Undeveloped Resources of Life (1920), p. 43

Peter Damian photo

“But if I have erred in anything, I gladly come before the teaching authority of Peter.”

Peter Damian (1007–1072) reformist monk

Letter 65:26. To Hildebrand, "archdeacon and immobile pillar of the Apostolic See," Dec. 1059. Op. Cit., p. 39. http://books.google.com/books?id=9smLdu9BvK0C&pg=PA39&dq=%22if+I+have+erred+in+anything,+I+gladly+come+before+the+teaching+authority%22&hl=en&ei=soXDTKrlNoGB8gbTqujZBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22if%20I%20have%20erred%20in%20anything%2C%20I%20gladly%20come%20before%20the%20teaching%20authority%22&f=false

Tom DeLay photo

“Our school systems teach the children that they are nothing but glorified apes who are evolutionized out of some primordial soup of mud.”

Tom DeLay (1947) American Republican politician

on floor of House of Representatives, quoted in [Capitol Sketchbook; In a Bitter Cultural War, An Ardent Call to Arms, The New York Times, 1999-06-17, http://www.nytimes.com/1999/06/17/us/capitol-sketchbook-in-a-bitter-cultural-war-an-ardent-call-to-arms.html?pagewanted=2, 2011-10-10]
Words originally written by Addison Dawson, read into the Congressional Record http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-1999-06-16/html/CREC-1999-06-16-pt1-PgH4364-2.htm by DeLay (June 16, 1999).
1990s

“The things which philosophy attempts to teach by reasoning, poverty forces us to practice.”

Stobaeus Ancient Greek anthologist

iv. 32a. 11
Quotes by and about Diogenes

Thomas Gray photo

“When love could teach a monarch to be wise,
And gospel-light first dawn'd from Bullen's eyes.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

Education and Government; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Youssef Bey Karam photo

“Each Christian and Muslim who acts aggressively, will be contradicting their religious teachings.”

Youssef Bey Karam (1823–1889) Lebanese rebel

Youssef Bey Karam Foundation

Yehudi Menuhin photo
Kent Hovind photo
Joseph E. Stiglitz photo

“It's actually a tribute to the quality of economics teaching that they have persuaded so many generations of students to believe in so much that seems so counter to what the world is like. Many of the things that I'm going to describe make so much more common sense than these notions that seem counter to what ones eyes see every day.”

Joseph E. Stiglitz (1943) American economist and professor, born 1943.

"Nobel Prize Lecture" http://nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=507 Information and the Change in the Paradigm in Economics, at Aula Magna, Stockholm University, (2001-12-08).

Jerry Springer photo

“Okay bear with me this'll be a little tough. You should know this isn't the first time I thought about leaving. I thought about it some twenty years ago when a check that would soon become a part of Cincinnati folklore, made me see life from the bottom. To be honest, a thought about ending it all crossed my mind, but a more reasonable alternative seemed to be 'hey how about just leaving town? Running away? Starting life over, some place else?' You see, in political terms as well as human, here in Cincinnati, I was dead. But then in the, probably, the luckiest decision I ever made, I decided 'No! I'm staying put!' I would withstand all the jokes, all the ridicule. I'd pretend it didn't hurt, and I would give every ounce of my being to Cincinnati. 'Why in time,' I was thinking, 'you'd have to like me. Or if not like me, at least respect me.' And I'd run for council even unendorsed. And I'd prove to you I could be the best public servant you ever had, or I'd die trying. Be it as a mayor, an anchor, or a commentator, whatever it took, I was determined to have you know that I was more than a check and a hooker on a one night stand. But something happened along the way. Maybe it's God's way of teaching us. I don't know, but you see? In trying to prove something to you, I learned something about me. I learned that I had fallen in love with you. With Cincinnati. With you who taught me more about life, and caring, and forgiving, and also most importantly, giving. Giving something back. Which is part of the reason… I have been… Excuse me. So sad this week. why… Why it's so hard to say goodbye. God bless you, and goodbye.”

Jerry Springer (1944) American television presenter, former lawyer, politician, news presenter, actor, and musician

his final commentary at NBC's WLWT in Ohio, January 1993
This American Life http://www.thislife.org/pages/descriptions/04/258.html, Ep. 258, 01/30/04, Leaving the Fold; Act One.

George Washington Carver photo
Mortimer J. Adler photo
Alice Moore Hubbard photo
Ulf Ekman photo
Robert F. Kennedy photo
Robert Fisk photo
Francis Escudero photo
George Long photo
Suzanne Collins photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“If this “sacred” book teaches man to enslave his brother, it is not inspired. A god who would establish slavery is as cruel and heartless as any devil could be.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)

Victor Villaseñor photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Max Ernst photo

“Woman's nakedness is wiser than the teachings of the philosophers. [the title of his essay]”

Max Ernst (1891–1976) German painter, sculptor and graphic artist

Quote in Max Ernst, Gonthier-Seghers, Paris, 1959; as cited in Max Ernst sculpture, Museo d'arte contemporanea. Edizioni Charta, Milano, 1996, p. 37
1951 - 1976

Michel De Montaigne photo

“He who would teach men to die would teach them to live.”

Book I, Ch. 20
Essais (1595), Book I
Variant: He who should teach men to die would at the same time teach them to live.

Margaret Mead photo
D. V. Gundappa photo
Dogen photo
Kent Hovind photo
John le Carré photo
Marshall McLuhan photo

“I heard what you were saying. You - you know nothing of my work. You mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you ever got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Cameo appearance as himself in Woody Allen's 1977 film Annie Hall
1970s

Mahatma Gandhi photo

“I know of no one who has done more for humanity than Jesus. In fact, there is nothing wrong with Christianity … The trouble is with you Christians. You do not begin to live up to your own teachings.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

In conversation, attributed by James E. McEldowney http://people.virginia.edu/~pm9k/jem/words/gandhi.html
Posthumous publications (1950s and later)

Alain Finkielkraut photo
Jiddu Krishnamurti photo