Bel Kaufman Quotes

Education is not a product: mark, diploma, job, money-in that order; it is a process, a never-ending one.

Children are the true connoisseurs. What’s precious to them has no price, only value.

Education can't make us all leaders, but it can teach us which leader to follow.

I had used my sense of humor; I had called it proportion, perspective. But perspective is distance.

The heart has its reasons; it's the mind that's suspect.

Love is the ultimate giving, an expression of one's best self.

Learning is a process of mutual discovery for teacher and pupil. Keep an open mind to their unexpected responses.

The preciousness of every moment is emphasized with every tick of the clock. Isn't it a magnificent day today?

Teachers try to make us feel lower than themselves, maybe because this is because they feel lower than outside people. One teacher told me to get out of the room and never come back, which I did.

People ate bread made of the shells of peas because there was no flour.

I feel no different than I felt at 99, 98 or 97. Just because you live a long time, you get all this attention. Just because you survived? Of course, I survived a lot.

Time collapses and expands like an erratic accordion.

I want to point the way to something that should forever lure them, when the TV set is broken and the movie is over and the school bell has rung for the last time.

Never mind the cream; it will always rise to the top. It's the skim milk that needs good teachers.

When giving comes directly from the heart, it can never disappoint or embarrass.

... good teachers, like Tolstoy's happy families, are alike everywhere.

I like the word OLD. Not senior, that's for proms. Older? Older than whom? 'Old' is honorable and ripe

One of my students had written wistfully of a dream-school that would have "windows with trees in them.

If a teacher wants to know something why doesn't she look it up herself instead of making we students do it? We benefit ourselves more by listening to her, after all she's the teacher!

Mythology is studied in the school system because most of us come from it.

A teacher is frequently the only adult in the pupil's environment who treats him with respect.

I’ll never retire as long as I live—that’s like retiring from life! I’ll never stop writing, teaching, lecturing. If you’re in good health, living is exciting on its own.

To the young, cliches seem freshly minted.

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.

Children are the true connoisseurs. What's precious to them has no price - only value.