Daily teacher quotes for your classroom wall

In this guide

• Why classroom quotes matter: building positivity and purpose
• How to choose quotes that resonate with your students and teaching style
• 25+ daily teacher quotes to inspire learning and growth
  • Growth and resilience
  • Curiosity and learning
  • Kindness and empathy
  • Creativity and innovation
  • Purpose and passion
• Creative ways to display quotes in your classroom
• Encouraging students to reflect and share their own inspirational quotes

A classroom is more than just a space for learning academic knowledge and skills. It can be an environment where young people develop curiosity, confidence, and character. Every single stimulus a student encounters has the ability to make an impact on how they understand themself and the world around them.

If you are looking to build a more positive and purposeful learning environment, incorporating daily quotes into the classroom routine can be an easy, effective way to set the tone, even if you don’t have your own classroom.

This article will help you choose the right quotes to create a powerful atmosphere for learning, and provide some ideas for how to incorporate them into a regular part of the overall curriculum.

Why classroom quotes matter: building positivity and purpose

Words matter. The right quote at the right time can shift a mindset, offer encouragement, or remind us of what is possible. Classroom quotes can serve as visual anchors or daily touchpoints that reinforce key classroom values and expectations.

Displaying inspirational quotes can help create:

A positive tone for the start of each day. 

• Quieting the distractions or outside challenges can help students focus on the present and engage in more meaningful learning.

A shared sense of purpose and motivation. 

• Powerful quotes can create a sense of unity and communal goals that help students understand that their educational journey is not an individual one.

• Others have come before them and there will be others who follow in their footsteps. 

A safe space where students feel seen and encouraged. 

• Utilizing a wide variety of diverse figures who discuss relevant topics can ground academic content in the everyday experiences of students.

A discussion starter about values, goals, and challenges. 

• Interpreting and applying quotes to personal events allows students to share their unique perspectives.

Whether it is a quote about learning from mistakes, thriving on adversity, exploring new ideas, or challenging injustices, these messages have the ability to empower students to reach beyond the immediate and focus on their potential.

How to choose quotes that resonate with your students and teaching style

The best quotes are not just ones that ‘sound nice’. They connect with your classroom culture and the individual identities of your students. 

Keep the following in mind when choosing quotes to use with your students:

1. Classroom values

• Select quotes that reflect the characteristics and behavior you want students to demonstrate. 

2. Content connection

• Intentionally use quotes that can easily connect with the academic material being covered in class. It will also help students retain the content and also the quotes.

3. Diversity of voices

• Try to include representation from different demographic groups to recognize the value and contributions of individuals from all kinds of backgrounds.

4. Age appropriate

• Keep the cognitive ability and experiences of your learners in mind when using quotes. If they cannot understand them or relate to them then the quote will not have any impact.

25+ daily teacher quotes to inspire learning and growth

Meaningful and targeted quotes from inspirational figures can help reinforce the ideas we want our students to absorb. We all are guilty of tuning out our parents when we were growing up. Unfortunately, the words and lessons we try to convey to our students can also get drowned out… 

Below is a list of quotes broken down into five different general categories. Use the following as a starting point and then start collecting your own on topics that are important for you in your classroom:

Growth and resilience

1. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” 

– Winston Churchill

2. “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall.” 

– Confucius

3. “Fall seven times, stand up eight.” 

– Japanese proverb

4. “Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.”

– Angela Duckworth

5. “No matter what your ability is, effort is what ignites that ability and turns it into accomplishment.”

– Carol Dweck

If you want students to create their own personal quotes related to this area, check out What is Resilience? to get them thinking about how this mindset applies to their own lives.

Curiosity and learning

6. “Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.” 

– Voltaire

7. “Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.”

 – Marie Curie

8. “The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.”

– Plutarch

9. “Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.” 

– Richard Feynmann

10. “We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.” 

– John Dewey

Kindness and empathy

11. “You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.” 

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

12. “People will forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” 

– Maya Angelou

13. “Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” 

– Desmond Tutu

14. “Life becomes easier and more beautiful when we can see the good in other people.” 

– Roy T. Bennett

15. “Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” 

– Mark Twain

Explore this topic further by using What is Empathy? and Dalai Lama: Empathy.

Creativity and innovation

16. “Creativity is putting your imagination to work, and it’s produced the most extraordinary results in human culture.” 

– Sir Ken Robinson

17. “We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.” 

– Kurt Vonnegut

18. “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” 

– Pablo Picasso

19. “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” 

– Sylvia Plath

20. “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.” 

– Brene Brown

I highly recommend watching Sir Ken Robinson’s Ted Talk, Do Schools Kill Creativity? as a way to get students to really engage in this topic and explore ways they can work on developing their own creativity.

Purpose and passion

21. “You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong you want to right. If you’re not passionate enough from the start, you’ll never stick it out.” 

– Steve Jobs

22. “Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.” 

– Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

23. “Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.” 

– John F. Kennedy

24. “True happiness…is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.” 

– Helen Keller

25. “There is no passion to be found playing small- in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” 

– Nelson Mandela

Creative ways to display quotes in your classroom

Making quotes visible and engaging is just as important as selecting them. If students do not see them or remember them then the value can easily be lost. 

Here are a few different ideas you can use to emphasize quotes and prevent them from being lost in all the messages of school:

Introductory quote

• Find a prominent area inside or outside the classroom that easily grabs the attention of students when they come to class each day. 

• This could be on the outside of the door or a main wall/display area that students see as they enter the room.

Take what you need

• Use a corkboard or something similar to post quotes on small strips of paper (think of those ‘room for rent’ or job flyers with phone numbers at the bottom that were a part of college life). 

• Allow students to grab a quote on their way in or out of the classroom.

Fortune cookie quotes

• Use plastic Easter eggs or foldable cards to discreetly distribute quotes to students. This can be done weekly, quarterly, or in any interval that fits your time and budget constraint. 

• Utilizing this method allows each student to receive a unique quote and then it can be used to spark full class discussions.

Student quote corner

• Dedicate an area of the room for students to write or post quotes throughout the year. 

• You can change up the theme or topic each month so that the content refreshes often. 

QR codes

• Place posters around the room with QR codes that open up a quote (this is also a great project for students to do). 

A great extension is for the link to open up an online discussion or form where students can share their thoughts about the quote.

Encouraging students to reflect and share their own inspirational quotes

One of my favorite things about incorporating quotes in the classroom is that it is really easy to get the students involved. 

I do admit to having my favorites and ones that I think relate to learning goals, but I am always surprised and impressed with the quotes students find!

Many times these quotes come from popular culture, such as movies or songs, so this is an amazing way to allow students to share something that represents their own identity and values. The older I get, the less I seem to recognize the source of the quotes, but that usually only adds to the fun for the students.

Here are a few ways to leverage the creativity and personality of your students to get them to do the heavy lifting:

Quote of the week

• Have students create a visual design with a powerful quote using software like Adobe or Canva. Each design should include a relevant image, the quote, and the source. 

• Start each week by projecting a student design and spend time discussing the meaning and lesson of the quote.

Gallery walk

• Ask students to post a quote around the room. Depending on time and materials, it can be handwritten or printed from an online source. 

• Give students time to walk around the room and read through the quotes. 

• Consider using sticky notes or small whiteboards by each quote so students can add comments or ask questions.

Reflections

• At the end of the week, or a unit of study, ask students to create their own short quote to communicate their learning experience. 

• Have each student submit their work and then choose a few to discuss as a class. This is a great way to do a quick ‘temperature check’ on how students are feeling.

Encouraging student agency over the learning experience promotes both reflection and connection. Most importantly though, it helps them feel the power of words and their own voice.