Sometimes all it takes is the right quote to inspire us, to motivate us, to influence us, to rouse us, to energize us... and sometimes all it takes is a good thesaurus to liven up your introduction to a bunch of things you wish you had said first. Below (and above) are some of my favorite quotes for personal consumption and sharing with my students. Each one has impacted my development as an educator or individual in some tremendous way. Enjoy!
"The unexamined life is not worth living." [Plato]
"All men by nature desire to know." [Aristotle] "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." [Rousseau] "All you can write is what you see." [Woody Guthrie] "... don't use all for yourself only... help the persecuted and the victim because they are your better friends... In this struggle of life you will find more love and you will be loved." [Nicola Sacco] "We gotta go and never stop going till we get there." [Jack Kerouac] "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." [George Orwell] "You'll get your freedom by letting your enemy know that you'll do anything to get your freedom." [Malcolm X] "Education can, and should, be dangerous to the existing social structure." [Howard Zinn] "It has to start somewhere. It has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now?" [Rage Against the Machine] "There is no shame in not knowing. The problem arises when irrational thought and attendant behavior fill the vacuum left by ignorance." [Neil deGrasse Tyson] "What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task." [President Barack Obama] "If you wish to experience peace, provide peace for another." [Tenzin Gyatso] "Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't." [Bill Nye] |
"If there is no struggle there is no progress." [Frederick Douglass]
"If you don't make mistakes, you're not working on hard enough problems. And that is a big mistake." [Frank Wilczek] "The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled." [Plutarch] "It is the habits of mind necessary for practicing and resolving disagreement - the mental toughness that democracy rests on - that kids most need to learn about in school. If we all agreed about everything, we wouldn't need democracy; we wouldn't need to learn how people work out differences." [Deborah Meier] "Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you." [Ralph Waldo Emerson] "Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good." [Thomas Paine] "The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently." [Friedrich Nietzsche] "Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself." [George Bernard Shaw] "History is indeed little more than the register of crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind." [Edward Gibbon] "The past is never dead. It's not even past." [William Faulkner] "... history is to the nation rather as memory is to the individual. As an individual deprived of memory becomes disoriented and lost... so a nation denied a conception of its past will be disabled in dealing with its present and its future." [Arthur Schlesinger] "It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default." [JK Rowling] |
The comic posted to the left comes from an awesome site where inspiring quotes are set to original art. This comic (and the quote it illustrates) inspired my thinking this summer when planning how to approach the social studies curriculum we are developing at Mumford this school year. Check it out: Zen Pencils |