Inspirational Quotes & Quotations On Early Childhood Education For Teachers

Being an early childhood educator is a unique profession that's as much a life calling as a career. Here are some interesting things that have been said about early childhood education over the years by teachers, students, philosophers and others. If you have an interesting quote about teaching or learning that you'd like to see added to this page, feel free to contact us. We'd love to hear from you!

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

"If you're going to equalize the academic playing field, you've got to get the kids in early childhood programs."
- Paul Vallas quotes

"Laurence Houseman once said, 'A saint is one who makes goodness attractive.' Surely, a great teacher does the same thing for education."
- John Trimble

"Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre."
- Gail Godwin

"This state has put a lot of concentration on reforming the K-12 system, but we've done very little with early childhood education. We can't wait until they get to kindergarten because then we're just playing catch-up."
- Evelyn Keating

"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance!"
- Andy McIntyre

"The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one."
- Malcolm Forbes

"Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed."
- Maria Montessori

"In early childhood you may lay the foundation of poverty or riches, industry of idleness, good or evil, by the habits to which you train your children. Teach them right habits then, and their future life is safe.”
- Lydia Sigourney

"Experts tell us that 90% of all brain development occurs by the age of five. If we don't begin thinking about education in the early years, our children are at risk of falling behind by the time they start Kindergarten."
- Robert. L. Ehrlich

"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men."
- Frederick Douglass

"We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today."
- Stacia Tauscher

"Reading aloud with children is known to be the single most important activity for building the knowledge and skills they will eventually require for learning to read."
- Marilyn Jager Adams

"Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression.
- Dr. Hiam Ginnot

"All of us have moments in our childhood where we come alive for the first time. And we go back to those moments and think, 'This is when I became myself.'"
- Rita Dove

:Beginning nutrition education in early childhood is an important part of helping to ensure that children will achieve healthful lifestyles."
- Robert Earl

"Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words!"
— A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, 1943

Adults are always asking little kids what they want to be when they grow up because they're looking for ideas."
- Paula Poundstone

"Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand."
- Chinese proverb

"Now, today, some children are enrolled in excellent programs. Some children are enrolled in mediocre programs. And some are wasting away their most formative years in bad programs....That's why I'm issuing a challenge to our states: Develop a cutting-edge plan to raise the quality of your early learning programs; show us how you'll work to ensure that children are better prepared for success by the time they enter kindergarten. If you do, we will support you with an Early Learning Challenge Grant that I call on Congress to enact."
- President Barack Obama, speaking to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, March 10, 2009

"There is no bilingual child care, and these children are arriving to kindergarten without the same early childhood experiences to help them succeed
~ Marta Koesling

"The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows."
- Sydney J. Harris

"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
- Henry Adams

"Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man."
- Rabindranath Tagore

"A teacher is a compass that activates the magnets of curiosity, knowledge, and wisdom in the pupils."
- Ever Garrison

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

"I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think."
- Socrates

"If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.
- Goethe

"The events of childhood do not pass but repeat themselves like seasons of the year."
- Eleanor Farjeon

"If a child lives with approval, he learns to live with himself."
- Dorothy Law Nolte

"The secret of teaching is to appear to have known all your life what you just learned this morning."
- Anonymous