Rafe Esquith Quotes

That's the beauty of art--we strive for perfection but never achieve it. The journey is everything.

The reason I love teaching, it's like being a miner. I find all these undiscovered jewels and, with the right motivation, they're amazed at what they can do. I have to show them their capability.

I want my students to love to read. Reading is not a subject. Reading is a foundation of life, an activity that people who are engaged with the world do all the time

It’s not the job of the teacher to save a child’s soul; it is the teacher’s job to provide an opportunity for the child to save his own soul.

I don't think we expect enough of students. They just need someone to show them the way.

Teach like your hair's on fire!

I want my kids to know that they're just as good and just as American as Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, or Dr. Martin Luther King. My worst fear is they will become ordinary.

Good teachers are an endangered species because they're giving up because of the tests and everything.

I love Shakespeare. In Shakespeare, tragedy is not just something that's bad. It's something that could be good and is bad.

Baseball is a religion in my classroom. It's a very important part of life, baseball.

I always tell the kids that excellence is like pregnancy. You can't be a little bit pregnant. You either are or you're not.

I have students who are PhDs in music who come back and scored the music and teach the kids the instruments that I don't know how to play. Those are the points of light, the former students.

There's a difference between logic and what maybe people see when they're presented evidence and justice and that they're not always together.