70 Classroom Quotes about the Importance of Education

These classroom quotes will provide some insight and context regarding the space where many students spend a lot of time.

As an international veteran educator, I can tell you that the classroom is a living organism, constantly transforming and adapting to the various beings that enter its space.

It can inspire or deflate a student’s thirst for knowledge as easily as it can enhance or destroy a person’s self-esteem.

We have organized the quotes into four sections:

• The value of learning outside of the classroom – some of the most important learning occurs outside of the classroom walls.

• The importance of the teacher in the classroom – the teacher has influence on the classroom environment.

• Technology in the classroom – Technology’s impact continues to grow in the classroom.

• The classroom as an obstacle – The classroom environment can be a difficult experience for many.
• We have to acknowledge this in order to correct it.

Let us know which quote is your favorite!

Don’t forget to also check out these education quotes on the power of learning

Check out our most popular quote article, a list of short inspirational quotes for daily inspiration.

Explore our complete collection of motivational quotes here.

Classroom quotes on the value of learning outside of the classroom

1. “The world is the true classroom.” – Jack Hanna

You will also enjoy our article on quotes about education.

2. “Learning is not limited to the classroom.” – Ilhan Omar

You will also enjoy our article on technology quotes.

3. “A student of life considers the world a classroom.” – Harvey Mackay

You will also enjoy our article on learning quotes.

4. “Art in the classroom not only spurs creativity, but it also inspires learning.” – Mickey Hart

You will also enjoy our article on Teacher’s Day quotes.

5. I don’t believe that you can learn acting in a classroom.” – Ali Fazal

6. “When you’re educated, it allows you to be more worldly. It’s more than just what happens in a classroom.” – Jalen Rose

7. “I have attention deficit disorder, so sitting in a classroom is not the best thing for me.”-Jeremy Miller

8. “The least of the work of learning is done in the classroom.” – Thomas Merton

9. “I’m a great believer in poetry out of the classroom, in public places, on subways, trains, on cocktail napkins..” – Billy Collins

10. “Well-roundedness comes not from sitting in a classroom but from experiencing the larger world.”- Alex Tabarrok

11. “I started culinary school at a very young age, and really I wanted to be out working, cooking, more than I wanted to be in a classroom.” – Jose Andres

12. “That’s the beauty of education, kids taking lessons out of the classroom and back into their own world where they can positively affect their family, their friends, and their greater community.” – Erin Gruwell

13. “In Berkeley, we built the garden and a kitchen classroom. We’ve been working on it for 12 years. We’ve learned a lot from it. If kids grow it and cook it, they eat it.” – Alice Waters

14. “I’m a comedian first. I’ve learned how to act. I just draw on life experiences and that’s how I’ve learned. I didn’t take classes or anything. I don’t need no classroom.”- Steve Harvey

15. “Increased physical activity during the school day can help children’s attention, classroom behavior, and achievement test scores. Meanwhile, the decline of play is closely linked to ADHD; behavioral problems; and stunted social, cognitive, and creative development.”- Darrel Hammond

16. “The educational highlights I remember were not in the classroom. My father spent a lot of time with me when he could. He taught me how to take square roots, a skill I have retained but do not use often, except to check that I still remember.” – Angus Deaton

Classroom quotes on the importance of the Teacher

17. “Everyday classroom teaching is not what children will remember, but how you made a difference in their lives.”- Nita Ambani

18. “It’s the teacher that makes the difference, not the classroom.” – Michael Morpurgo

19. “In schools with a history of chaos, the teacher who can keep the classroom calm becomes virtually indispensable.” – Jonathan Kozol

20. “There is nothing more valuable than great classroom instruction. But let’s stop putting the whole burden on teachers. We also need better parents. Better parents can make every teacher more effective.” – Thomas Friedman

21. “Our highly qualified teachers not only work hard, but they care about each and every student that enters their classroom.” – Conrad Burns

22. “It is vital that teachers can be paid more without having to leave the classroom.” – Michael Gove

23. “As the daughter of a schoolteacher, I feel very strongly that the most important thing in school takes place right there in that classroom, and the interaction between the teacher and the child.” – Kerry Healy

24. “The main difference in the effectiveness of teaching comes from the thoughts the teacher has had during the entire time of his or her existence and brings into the classroom. A teacher concerned with developing humans affects the students quite differently from a teacher who never thinks about such things.” – Rudolph Steiner

Classroom quotes about technology and the classroom 

25. “Let students use technologies in the classroom.” – Weili Dai

26. “While classrooms will be in use for many years to come, their value will diminish quickly as the online options become more pervasive.” – Thomas Frey

27. “We can close the gap and improve what happens in the classroom by using educational technology that is the same high quality everywhere.” – Major Owens

28. “As technology plays a major role inside and outside the classroom, we want to make sure education innovation is accessible.” – Sal Khan

29. “In science, technology, engineering and mathematics, men far outnumber women in the classroom and the boardroom.” – Weili Dai

30. The Internet is just a world passing around notes in a classroom.” – John Stewart

31. “Children are already accustomed to a world that moves faster and is more exciting than anything a teacher in front of a classroom can do.” – Major Owens

32. “Not everything that happens in an in-person classroom is currently replicated with an online course, and perhaps the experience will never be the quite the same. But there are new opportunities that online learning opens up that would have never been possible without this technology.” – Daphne Koller

33. “The very first video experience I had was in high school. They brought a black-and-white closed-circuit surveillance camera into the classroom. I will never forget, as a kid, looking at that image.” – Bill Viola

34. “When new technology in the classroom starts happening, some people get very excited and think of it as a panacea. It attracts very high amounts of money; it raises expectations, and those expectations aren’t met.” – Ahmed Zawahi

35. “Traditionally, universities have seen size as potentially dilutive to quality. If you doubled the size of campus and faculty, most would argue that you would make it a less compelling school. However, online schools will be as good as their classroom peers only if they are large enough to afford a substantial and ongoing investment.” – John Katzman

36. “When new technology in the classroom starts happening, some people get very excited and think of it as a panacea. It attracts very high amounts of money; it raises expectations, and those expectations aren’t met.” – Mitch Kapor

The Classroom as an Obstacle or Limitation

37. “Every day, I see my students work hard to overcome obstacles just to be in the classroom.” – Jill Biden

38. “The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests. The library was open, unending, free.”- Ta-Nehisi Coates

39. “Public education grants secular worldviews an exclusive monopoly in the classroom”-Nancy Pearcy

40. “One in four children being victimized? That’s about seven children in every classroom. That’s a significant proportion of the population.” – Wendy Craig

41. “I entered the classroom with the conviction that it was crucial for me and every other student to be an active participant, not a passive consumer… education that connects the will to know with the will to become.” – Bell Hooks

42. “Some of my favorite memories happened in the ‘Boy Meets World’ classroom”- Danielle Fishel

43. “I’m a big fan of regular school and regular education. I just learn better in a classroom where I can talk to other students.” – Nick Robinson

44. “I believe that our teachers need more freedom to be creative in the classroom in order to maximize the time students spend learning, not the time they spend taking tests.” – Gary Herbert

45. “I think it’s useful to recall that a lot of these statutes like ‘disrupting the classroom’ or ‘disturbing the peace’ have long been historically used to oppress and criminalize black people.” – Kimberie Williams Crenshaw

46. “The worst censors are those prohibiting criticism of the theory of evolution in the classroom.” – Phyllis Schlafly

47. “Consider what it is like to go into a new classroom and to see before you suddenly, and in a way you cannot avoid recognizing, the dreadful consequences of a year’s wastage of so many lives.” – Jonathan Kozol

48. “Teachers have told us across the country that what’s severely outdated is the teacher at the front of the classroom as the font of knowledge, because as we know, access to knowledge and information is now ubiquitous. So instead, teachers want to help students learn how to think so that they can be lifelong learners.” – L. Powell Jobs

49. “I had a lot of anxiety about jumping into another classroom. They were always putting me in special ed. But I was smart; I wasn’t like these kids in the special-ed classes. But it would make me feel a little bit stupid.” – Nate Diaz

50. “I had a few teachers when they would hear a noise they would immediately be like, ‘Nadine, outside!’ I spent about two years standing outside the physics classroom.” – Nadine Coyle

Classroom quotes on the impact of education in shaping the minds of students

51. “I’ve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.” – Haim Ginott

52. “The influence of teachers extends beyond the classroom, well into the future. It is they who shape and enrich the minds of the young, who touch their hearts and souls. It is they who shape a nation’s future.” – F. Sionil Jose

53. “I realized if you can change a classroom, you can change a community, and if you change enough communities you can change the world. – Erin Gruwell

54. “The message of Passover remains as powerful as ever. Freedom is won not on the battlefield but in the classroom and the home. Teach your children the history of freedom if you want them never to lose it.” – Jonathan Sacks

55. “There is incredible potential for digital technology in and beyond the classroom, but it is vital to rethink how learning is organised if we are to reap the rewards. – Geoff Mulgan

56. “Teach love, generosity, good manners and some of that will drift from the classroom to the home and who knows, the children will be educating the parents.” – Roger Moore

57. “The classroom should be an entrance into the world, not an escape from it.” – John Ciardi

58. “In an effort to create a culture within my classroom where students feel safe sharing the intimacies of their own silences, I have four core principles posted on the board that sits in the front of my class, which every student signs at the beginning of the year: read critically, write consciously, speak clearly, tell your truth.” – Clint Smith

59. “Great teachers had great personalities and that the greatest teachers had outrageous personalities. I did not like decorum or rectitude in a classroom; I preferred a highly oxygenated atmosphere, a climate of intemperance, rhetoric, and feverish melodrama. A great teacher is my adversary, my conqueror, commissioned to chastise me.” – Pat Conroy

60. “Teachers can be a living example to their students. Not that teachers should look for students to idealize them. One who is worth idealizing does not care whether others idealize them or not.” – Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Classroom Quotes To Keep Students Motivated

61. “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” — William Butler Yeats

62. “Books are love letters (or apologies) passed between us, adding a layer of conversation beyond our spoken words.” — Donalyn Miller

63. “A room without books is like a body without a soul.” — Marcus Tullius Cicero

64. “It’s the last day of school! Well, big brother, can you believe it? My last day of school. No more reading, writing, arithmetic! No more learning forever!” — Craig Schulz.

65. “Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.” — Margaret Fuller.

66. “A desk is where I can escape from the world and enter into my own private space.” — J.K. Rowling

67. “No one is perfect – that’s why pencils have erasers.” — Wolfgang Riebe

68. “Cameras in classrooms are no substitute for greater authority by parents and teachers.” — Paul Weyrich.

69. “Learning is not a product of schooling but a lifelong attempt to acquire it.” — Albert Einstein

70. “The most important thing we learn at school is the fact that the most important things can’t be learned at school.” — Haruki Murakami

What did you learn from these classroom quotes?

Did a specific quote stand out to you?

It is important to remember that effective educators understand that the classroom environment is a special part of the learning experience.

Students spend the majority of their days in various classrooms.

Think back to when you were in school.

You certainly had the experience of the boring teacher with the matching classroom, blank walls, sterile looking desks made of wood or metal.

Those environments do not spark creativity, they may spark some daydreaming, which has its place, but most people don’t send their kids to school to daydream.

They send them to prepare to make their dreams real.

The classroom is a place where students feel safe, appreciated and excited to enter.

It is the place where history comes alive, information is put into context, curiosity is quenched and solutions created.

Hopefully, these classroom quotes and sayings gave you some new insights on the classroom environment.