Deep thinkers and great leaders throughout time have recognized the vital role that teachers and education play in the life of society. Below are a few inspirational quotes that we hope will confirm your interest in becoming a teacher and your commitment to the teaching profession.

“A teacher affects eternity — he can never tell where his influence stops.” — Henry Adams, American writer and educator

“I believe that the community’s duty to education is its paramount moral duty. By law and punishment, by social agitation and discussion, society can regulate and form itself in a more or less haphazard and chance way. But through education society can formulate its own purposes, can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move.” — John Dewey, leading American philosopher

“Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people may be engaged in.” — Abraham Lincoln. U.S. President

“To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching.” — George Bernard Shaw, British writer

“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.” — H.G. Wells, British writer

“What nobler employment, or more valuable to the state, than that of the man who instructs the rising generation?” — Cicero, Roman statesman and philosopher

“All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.” — Aristotle, Greek philosopher

“At the desk where I sit, I have learned one great truth. The answer for all our national problems—the answer for all the problems of the world—comes to a single word. That word is ‘education.’” — Lyndon Johnson, U.S. President

“Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom.” — George Washington Carver, 19th century African American scientist

“Education is the master key for creating Heaven on Earth.” — Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of Maharishi University of Management