Quotes on Homeschooling and Learning

Words to Inspire! With links to related books.*

Print the quotes. Tape one to the bathroom mirror and another to the refrigerator door.

Discuss them with your kids.

Change the quotes every week or whenever you want fresh inspiration.

Quotes by Children

"I can just be myself all of the time. I don't have to change myself to fit into the group."

~ Christopher, age 10, when asked whether being homeschooled made him feel different from his schooled cousins.

“Home’s Cool! Get it? Homeschool!”

~ Kalman, age 10, when asked by strangers why he isn’t in school.

Educators

"Free the child's potential, and you will transform him into the world."

~Maria Montessori, 1870-1952, Italian physician and educator, author of The Absorbent Mind

"The essence of teaching is to make learning contagious, to have one idea spark another."

~ Marva Collins, educator, author of Values: Lighting the Candle of Excellence: A Guide for the Family (full of good quotes) and Marva Collins’s Way by Marva Collins

"Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds."

~ Plato, Greek Philosopher, student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle

"The motivation to learn is an innate condition of the human race. The least we can do is nothing to inhibit it."

~ Lynn Stoddard, author of Educating for Human Greatness (highly recommended)

"Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those who sang best."

~ Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933), American author, educator, and clergyman  

"Good schools, like good societies and good families, celebrate and cherish diversity."

~ Deborah Meier (1931 - ), educator, scholar, founder of Central Park East, author of The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem

“What matters is not what we teach; it's what they learn, and the probability of real learning is far higher when the students have a lot to say about both content and the process.”

~ Alfie Kohn (1957- ), lecturer on education and parenting, author of Unconditional Parenting and Feel-Bad Education (essays on children and schooling)

“What is most important and valuable about the home as a base for children’s growth into the world is not that it is a better school than the schools, but that it isn’t a school at all.”

~ John Holt (1923-1985), educator, founder of Growing Without Schooling, author of How Children Learn and How Children Fail

"We learn through experience and experiencing, and no one teaches anyone anything. This is as true for the infant moving from kicking to crawling to walking as it is for the scientist with his equations. If the environment permits it, anyone can learn whatever he chooses to learn; and if the individual permits it, the environment will teach him everything it has to teach."

~Viola Spolin, Improvisation for the Theater

Authors and Poets

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea."

~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1900-1944, French aviator, author of The Little Prince

"What we learn with pleasure, we never forget."

~ Alfred Mercier (1816-1894), doctor and author

"Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be."

~ Joseph Campbell (1904-1987), educator, mythologist, author of The Hero With a Thousand Faces

"Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger."

~ Ben Okri (1959 - ), Nigerian poet and author

"Richer than I you can never be-- I had a Mother who read to me."

~ Strickland Gillian (1869-1954), American poet and humorist.

"What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child."

~ George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish playwright and author

"Never doubt that you can change history. You already have."

~ Marge Piercy (1936-), poet, novelist, social activist

"The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards; and curiosity itself can be vivid and wholesome only in proportion as the mind is contented and happy."

~ Anatole France (1844-1924), French poet, journalist, novelist, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature

"There is a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth."

~Maya Angelou (1928-2014), African-American author, poet, dancer, actor, singer, recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The Schoolboy

I love to rise in a summer morn
When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the skylark sings with me.
O! what sweet company!

But to go to school on a summer morn,
O! it drives all joy away;
…

Read the rest of the poem here.

~from Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake (1757-1827), English Poet, Painter and Printmaker

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

~ William Butler Yeats, author who famously collected Fairy Tales of Ireland

"I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship."

~ Louisa May Alcott, 1832-1888, author of Little Women

"Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering."

~ A. A. Milne, 1882-1956, author of Winnie-the-Pooh and poetry for children

""That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way."

~Doris Lessing (1919-2013), British author, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature

"Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold."

~ Joseph Chilton Pearce (1926 - ), author of Magical Child

"I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars."

~ Walt Whitman (1819-1892), poet, journalist, humanist, called the father of free verse

Poetry for Kids: Walt Whitman, Karen Karbiener, ed., for ages 8-13

"The universe is one great kindergarten for man. Everything that exists here brought with it its own peculiar lesson. The mountain teaches stability and grandeur; the ocean immensity and change. Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes, every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon the soul of man."

~ Orison Swett Marden (1850-1924), American author and philosopher

“I am not a teacher; only a fellow traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead — ahead of myself as well as of you.”

~ George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British dramatist, critic, writer

“Thank goodness I was never sent to school: it would have rubbed off some of the originality.”

~ Beatrix Potter, artist, naturalist, author of Peter Rabbit and Other Tales

““The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.””
~ T.H. White, The Once and Future King

Musicans and Performers

"What we play is life."

~ Louis Armstrong (1901-1971), pioneer in American jazz

“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.”

~ Fred Rogers, host of “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood,” author of Life’s Journey According to Mr. Rogers: Things to Remember Along the Way

Scientists

“Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.”
~ Isaac Asimov

"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."

~ Marie Curie (1867-1934), Polish and Naturalized-French physicist and chemist, first woman to win a Nobel Prize

"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge ."

~Albert Einstein (1879-1955), physicist, creator of the theory of relativity

"Before anything else, preparation is the key to success."

~Alexander Graham Bell (1837-1922), scientist, innovator, inventor

"You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives."

~ Clay P. Bedford (1903-1991), Industrialist and Engineer

"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge."

~ Albert Einstein (1879-1955), recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics

World Leaders

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”

~ Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790), founding father of the US, author, diplomat, inventor

"Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom."

~ John Adams (1735-1826), second President of the United States

"If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us."

~Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr. (1900-1965), governor, presidential candidate, ambassador.

"Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive."

~ Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884-1962, diplomat, activist, drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, author of You Learn By Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

*This post contains affiliate links. This means that if you make a purchase through an affiliate link, I make a small fee at no cost to you, which helps maintain this website. You are free to browse without making a purchase, or to purchase from another source. Thank you!