Part of the problem facing teaching in the contemporary world is that its status as a profession has been undermined by the contemptible view that only what makes money is admirable.

We need great teachers out there because people need great role models. It’s one of those things that you look back and think about those really great teachers that we had and some who … didn’t make an impact on me and I think we learn more from them of what not to do. But, nowadays, I think the respect factor has to be added back into the school system and that comes from at home. The respect for teachers should be there. Education and healthcare are the two most important things if you think about it.

Teaching remains a heroic act to me, and teachers live a necessary and all-important life. We are killing their spirit with unnecessary pressure and expectation that seem forced and destructive to me. Long ago I was one of them. I still regret I was forced to leave them. My entire body of work is because of men and women like them.

Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.

Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty.

Teaching is a record of failures. But the glory of teaching is in the attempt.

We need to unlearn our respect for education, since it has undermined our respect for ourselves. It's worth taking time to demistify it. [...] All the things an adolescent can be [...] are reduced to a three digit number. [...] We too can decide how to value our education instead of letting them value us.

Already complaints are multiplying on every hand that that most gracious quality of all that adorns the age of childhood — the quality of reverence — is fast fading from our schools and households; that the oldtime respect for father and mother is diminished, and grown rarer and more uncertain.

A teacher seldom receives full recognition for his services during his lifetime, unless he lives to extreme old age. While the physician is often cheered by the gratitude of those to whom his skill has restored to health, and the clergyman receives the affectionate thanks of those whom he has guided and comforted, and the successful lawyer is supposed to be burdened with plaudits and fees,—the teacher has to do mainly with those who are too immature to understand the services which he renders and to appreciate the self-denial which is manifested in much of his care. His pupils are too little acquainted with the world to compare his acumen and his learning with those of others; they cannot sympathize with him in his ambitions and difficulties and task; they may not feel his strong desire to go on to the acquisition of new knowledge.

I think one of the great tragedies of my own education … was that the science was denuded of all the passion and the feeling.

Dartmouth is the place I’ve devoted my life to, so it’s very sad to see this kind of decline in the intellectual strength of the institution.

What is left when honor is lost?

We are shocked when we see educators, timid before criticism and confused about first principles, betray their trust. And we wonder what can be that 'philosophy of education' which believes that young people can be trained to the duties of citizenship by wrapping their minds in cotton wool.

Honors to me now are not what they once were.