Educational Motivation Quotes

Young gentlemen, who are to display their knowledge to the world, should have every motive of emulation, should be formed into regular classes, should read and dispute together, should have all the honors, and, if one may say so, the pomp of learning set before them, to call up their ardor. It is their business, and they should apply to it as such.

I was an appalling person to teach. At 14, I was pretty advanced. I would read all the books in a few minutes, and I was bored. It must have been awful for a teacher to have a bright boy who's giving them his undivided indifference.

I wouldn't have went to school if I wasn't playing football.

I remain totally convinced that if we can do one more simple thing to help kids and adults to learn more, it is to inspire them to read more.

I grew up in a rural area. I grew up in deep southern middle Tennessee, probably about thirty miles from the Alabama border. There's nothing there, really. And the TV was my link to the outside world. It's what kept me from going into factory employment. It's what made me want to go to college. It was really inspiring.

During those long years in Oakland public schools, I did not have one teacher who taught me anything relevant to my own life or experience. Not one instructor ever awoke in me a desire to learn more or to question or to explore the worlds of literature, science, and history. All they did was try to rob me of the sense of my own uniqueness and worth, and in the process nearly killed my urge to inquire.

I don't think poverty provides that much of an obstacle to education as one thinks. I think the bigger obstacle to education is the fact that it's a very hard thing to do for a first-generation schoolgoer. Because not to have parents at home who can help you, motivate you, is a problem even when the parents are in the abstract very keen on children being educated.

The drive to learn is as strong as the sexual drive. It begins earlier and lasts longer

And that's it; that's why I want to teach; that's the one and only compensation: to make a permanent difference in the life of a child.

Some people will pay their tuition, and then defy you to give them an education.

I've always been surrounded by many great people and professors, but my family, especially my mom who was a teacher, was the person who encouraged me to study and pushed me to continue. When we're young, we don't understand why our parents bug us so much with school and doing homework, but it's a blessing to have that support at home.

The inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater importance to education than any input of dollars... A whole generation is growing up which has been attracted to the hard disciplines of science and engineering by the romance of space.

School visits are something I do fairly often: I always say to the students that somebody has got to end up with the interesting careers, so why not them?

I became so frustrated with visiting inner-city schools (in America) that I just stopped going. The sense that you need to learn just isn't there. If you ask the kids what they want or need, they will say an iPod or some sneakers. In South Africa, they don't ask for money or toys. They ask for uniforms so they can go to school.

Education is not something where you just tip your head and they pour it in your ear. You’ve got to want it.

These dear souls came not to Sabbath school because it was popular to do so, nor did I teach them because it was reputable to be thus engaged. Every moment they spent in that school, they were liable to be taken up, and given thirty-nine lashes. They came because they wished to learn. Their minds had been starved by their cruel masters. They had been shut up in mental darkness. I taught them, because it was the delight of my soul to be doing something that looked like the bettering the condition of my race

An interesting question: is it easier to motivate a learned individual that never does anything, or educate an ignorant individual that actually produces things?

I did not find my studies particularly enthralling.

I don't see a day when teenagers don't read. They are very enthusiastic. That is so inspiring to me.

Growing up in music motivated me. I applied that to my education and it made me a better person.

There are some who wish to learn for no other reason than that they may be looked upon as learned, which is ridiculous vanity ... Others desire to learn that they may morally instruct others, that is love. And, lastly, there are some who wish to learn that they may be themselves edified; and that is prudence.

Their pupils and their little charges are not nourished and fed by what they learn: the learning is passed from hand to hand with only one end in view: to show it off, to put into our accounts to entertain others with it, as though it were merely counters, useful for totting up and producing statements, but having no other use or currency. 'Apud alios loqui didicerunt, non ipsi secum' [They have learned how to talk with others, not with themselves]

I bring truth to tha youth tear tha roof off tha ol' school.

Our goal with Khan Academy Kids is to inspire a life-long love of learning.

I didn't work especially hard at mathematics at school, because I knew that's what I'd be doing later.