90 Best Teacher Appreciation Quotes

What do you get teachers who teach well & impact your life? These teacher appreciation quotes can help!

Teachers deserve our gratitude and respect. They dedicate their lives to teaching children and guiding them through life. In return, they receive little recognition.

If you want to show teachers some love, consider these ways to reward them: 

• Send a card to the teacher you admire. Customize it according to their qualities, traits & the impact they have had on your life.
• If you just want to thank your teacher, then consider including a quote from the below list, which stands true for every great teacher. 
• It’s important to thank your teachers. Whichever way you do this, make sure to follow through & express your token of love & gratitude!

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Best Teacher Appreciation Quotes

1. “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”- Henry Brooks Adams
2. “One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.” – Malala Yousafzai
3. “If you can read this, thank a teacher.”- American Proverb

Also read: 50 powerful education quotes for kids to realize the importance of learning

4. “When educating the minds of our youth, we must not forget to educate their hearts.”- Dalai Lama
5. “A good teacher is like a candle – it consumes itself to light the way for others.”- Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
6. “A teacher is a compass that activates the magnets of curiosity, knowledge, and wisdom in the pupils.”- Ever Garrison
7. “It’s easy to make a buck. It’s a lot tougher to make a difference.” – Tom Brokaw
8. “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” – William Arthur Ward
9. “They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.”- Carl W. Buechner
10. “Children are likely to live up to what you believe of them.” – Lady Bird Johnson
11. “The great teacher is not the man who supplies the most facts, but the one in whose presence we become different people.”- Ralph Waldo Emerson
12. “What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches.” – Karl Menninger
13. “I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.” – Alexander the Great
14. “The task of the excellent teacher is to stimulate ‘apparently ordinary’ people to unusual effort. The tough problem is not in identifying winners: it is in making winners out of ordinary people.” K. Patricia Cross
15. “Give me a fish and I eat for a day. Teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime.” – Chinese Proverb
16. “It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.”- Albert Einstein

Also read: 40 parenting quotes that are funny, witty & inspiring

17. “Teaching is a very noble profession that shapes the character, caliber, and future of the individual. If the people remember me as a good teacher, that will be the biggest honor for me.” – APJ Abdul Kalam
18. “Nine-tenths of education is encouragement.”- Anatole France
19. “Being able to help someone learn something is a talent.” – Margaret Riel
20. “A good teacher can inspire hope; ignite the imagination, and instill a love of learning.” – Brad Henry
21. “Summer vacation is the time when parents realize teachers are grossly underpaid.”- Unknown
22. “Everyone who remembers his own education remembers teachers, not methods and techniques. The teacher is the heart of the educational system.” – Sidney Hook
23. “Teaching is not just a job. It is a human service, and it must be thought of as a mission.”- Dr. Ralph Tyler
24. “Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher.” – Japanese Proverb
25. “Those who know, do. Those who understand, teach.”- Aristotle
26. “To teach is to learn twice.” – Joseph Joubert
27. “What greater or better gift can we offer the republic than to teach and instruct our youth?” – Marcus T. Cicero
28. “One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings.”- Carl Jung
29.  “When we strive to become better teachers than we are, everyone in our classroom becomes better too.”- Robert John Meehan
30. “Great teachers empathize with kids, respect them, and believe that each one has something special that can be built upon.” – Ann Lieberman

Also read: 60 inspiring quotes for kids to help them skate through life

31. “Students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”- John C. Maxwell
32. “Teacher appreciation makes the world of education go around.”  – Helen Peters
33. “Be a wonderful role model because you will be the window through which many children will see their future.” – Thomas Mckinnon
34. “He who opens a school door closes a prison.”  – Victor Hugo
35. “The greatest sign of success for a teacher… is to be able to say, ‘The children are now working as if I did not exist.’”  – Maria Montessori
36. “I can’t believe I just saw my teacher at the grocery store! I thought she lived in her classroom! –Heidi McDonald
37. “The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.” – Khalil Gibran
38. “Anyone who does anything to help a child in his life is a hero to me.”- Fred Rogers (Mister Rogers)
39. “Educators are the only people who lose sleep over other people’s kids.” –Nicholas A. Ferroni
40. “Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.” – Jacques Barzun
41. “Most of us end up with no more than five or six people who remember us. Teachers have thousands of people who remember them for the rest of their lives.” – Andy Rooney
42. “Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre.”  – Gail Godwin
43. My teacher thought I was smarter than I was – so I was.”- Six-Year-Old Child
44. “If you have to put someone on a pedestal, put teachers. They are society’s heroes.”- Guy Kawasaki
45. “In order to be an effective teacher you have to love your students as human beings and you have to love teaching.”- Maribeth Sublette
46. “Education is the key to success in life, and teachers make a lasting impact in the lives of their students.” – Solomon Ortiz
47. “Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best.” – Bob Talbert
48. “One good teacher in a lifetime may sometimes change a delinquent into a solid citizen.” – Philip Wylie
49. “When you teach your son, you teach your son’s son.”- The Talmud
50. “Teachers teach because they care. Teaching young people is what they do best. It requires long hours, patience, and care.” – Horace Mann
51. “A teacher takes a hand, opens a mind, and touches a heart.”- Unknown
52. “Not all superheros wear capes, some have teaching degrees.” – Unknown
53. “It takes a big heart to help shape little minds.”- Unknown
54. “I was lucky that I met the right mentors and teachers at the right moment.” – James Levine
55. “Not all superheroes have capes, some have Teaching Degrees.”- Unknown
56. “Good teachers know how to bring out the best in students.”— Charles Kuralt
57. “Teaching is the profession that teaches all the other professions.” – Unknown
58. “If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.”- John Dewy
59. “Your heart is slightly bigger than the average human heart, but that’s because you’re a teacher.” – Aaron Bacall

Related Reading: 
15 Best End of Year Teacher Gifts to Thank Your Educators

60. What a teacher writes on the blackboard of life can never be erased.” – Unknown
61. “A teacher’s job is to take a bunch of live wires and see that they are well-grounded.”- D. Martin
62. “Teaching: the only profession where you steal things from home and bring them to work.” –Unknown
63. “What a gift for any teacher to see the students smile and live up to their potential. That’s the reward. That’s humbling to be a witness to something like that.”- Mary Vallelonga
64. “Cheers to all of the teachers who give out pencils every single day who know that they’ll never get them back.”- Unknown
65. “The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.”- Mark Van Doren
66. “Don’t judge a teacher until you’ve walked a mile in her shoes.”- Unknown
67. “I think the teaching profession contributes more to the future of our society than any other single profession.” – John Wooden
68. “I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.”- Lily Tomlin
69. “A teacher’s job is to take a bunch of live wires and see that they are well-grounded.” –Darwin D. Martin
70. “The best teachers teach from the heart, not from the book.” – Unknown
71. “Teaching is more than imparting knowledge; it is inspiring change. Learning is more than absorbing facts; it is acquiring understanding.”—William Arthur Ward
72. “Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.” – Josef Albers
73. “Teachers have three loves: love of learning, love of learners, and the love of bringing the first two loves together.” –Scott Hayden
74. “The best teachers are those who show you where to look but don’t tell you what to see.”- Alexandra K. Trenfor
75. “It’s the teacher that makes the difference, not the classroom.” –Michael Morpurgo
76. “Teachers appreciate being appreciated, for teacher appreciation is their highest award.”- William Prince
77. “Teachers can change lives with just the right mix of chalk and challenges.” –Joyce Meyer
78. “The teacher … must have a kind of faith that the child will reveal himself through work.”-  Maria Montessori
79. “To this end, the greatest asset of a school is the personality of the teacher.” –John Strachan
80. “In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.”- Phil Collins
81. “The best teacher of children, in brief, is one who is essentially childlike.” –H. L. Mencken
82. “Without teachers, life would have no class.”- Unknown
83. “Good teachers are the ones who can challenge young minds without losing their own.” –Unknown
84. “A truly amazing teacher is hard to find, difficult to part with, and impossible to forget.”- Unknown
85. “The duties of a teacher are neither few nor small, but they elevate the mind and give energy to the character.” –Dorothea Dix”
86. “A teacher nourishes the soul of a child for a lifetime.”- Unknown
87. “A truly special teacher is very wise and sees tomorrow in every child’s eyes.”- Unknown
88. “Teaching is the greatest act of optimism.” –Colleen Wilcox
89. “The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called ‘truth’. –Dan Rather
90. “Teaching is the greatest act of optimism.” –Colleen Wilcox

How to Write a Thank You Message for Your Teacher

If you want to write an appreciation message for your teacher (or your child’s teacher), there are some simple steps to follow: 

1. Start with a quote from the above list 
2. Personalize the second line to show the value that teacher has added 
3. End with best wishes 

Here’s an example for you to understand better: 

Someone rightly said – “A truly amazing teacher is hard to find, difficult to part with, and impossible to forget.” I am so glad to have found a teacher like you, someone who inspires me to be better everyday. I wish you everything you want because you truly deserve it! 

Hope you’re able to write some great teacher appreciation messages and share them with your best & favorite teachers!