160 School Quotes to Inspire Lifelong Learning

School is where learning begins, friendships form, and memories are made.

To celebrate the experience, we’ve compiled the best school quotes for your next post.

And if you’re looking for inspiring or funny sayings about school life.

Now go ahead and browse through to find your favorite.

Contents show

Best Short School Quotes

“He who opens a school door, closes a prison.” — Victor Hugo

“School prepares you for the real world… which also bites.” — Jim Benton

“What is the most important thing one learns in school? Self-esteem, support, and friendship.” — Terry Tempest Williams

“It is not who you attend school with but who controls the school you attend.” — Nick Giovanni

“School is a place that provides education and education is the key to life.” — unknown

“The fundamental purpose of school is learning, not teaching.” — Richard DuFour

“In school, you learn how to learn.” — unknown

“I think school is a place where thinking should be taught.” — Edward de Bono

“You can’t learn in school what the world is going to do next year.” — Henry Ford

“It’s a mistake to think that once you’re done with school you need never learn anything new.” — Sophia Loren

“Jails and prisons are the complement of schools; so many less as you have of the latter, so many more must you have of the former.” — Horace Mann

“The chief reason for going to school is to get the impression fixed for life that there is a book side for everything.” — Robert Frost

“If there were no schools to take the children away from home part of the time, the insane asylums would be filled with mothers.” — Edgar W. Howe

“In school, you’re taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you’re given a test that teaches you a lesson.” — Tom Bodett

“Cheating in school is a form of self-deception. We go to school to learn. We cheat ourselves when we coast on the efforts and scholarship of someone else.” — James E. Faust

“What a school thinks about its library is a measure of what it feels about education.” — Harold Howe

“School made us ‘literate’ but did not teach us to read for pleasure.” — Ambeth R. Ocampo

“School should be the best party in town.” — Peter Kline

“There’s no use going to school unless your final destination is the library.” — Ray Bradbury

“The things taught in schools and colleges are not an education, but the means of education.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“We don’t stop going to school when we graduate.” — Carol Burnett

“I’m not going to school just for the academics – I wanted to share ideas, to be around people who are passionate about learning.” — Emma Watson

“Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It’s like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won’t fatten the dog.” — Mark Twain

“I never let my schooling interfere with my education.” — Mark Twain

“There is a grave defect in the school where the playground suggests happy and classroom disagreeable thoughts.” — John Spalding

“If the school sends out children with a desire for knowledge and some idea of how to acquire and use it, it will have done its work.” — Richard Livingstone

“You don’t appreciate a lot of stuff in school until you get older. Little things like being spanked every day by a middle aged woman: Stuff you pay good money for in later life.” — Emo Philips

“We class schools into four grades: leading school, first-rate school, good school and school.” — Evelyn Waugh

“The pathway to educational excellence lies within each school.” — Terrance Deal

“Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.” — Benjamin Franklin

“Those who get lost on the way to school will never find their way through life.” — German Proverb

“But if there’s a school bus, there needs to be a school!” — Fred Rogers

“I have to get back in school somewhere. I can’t just go home and tell my mother I got kicked out of school.” — Michael Schiffer

“Back to school. Back to school, to prove to Dad that I’m not a fool. I got my lunch packed up, my boots tied tight, I hope I don’t get in a fight.” — Tim Herlihy

“This is not a gay school. We just have a zero tolerance harassment policy.” — Ryan Murphy

“No state schools are cheap.” — Bonnie Turner

“It’s my first day of high school. I have seven new notebooks, a skirt I hate, and a stomach ache.” — Laurie Halse Anderson

“School spirit’ is a curious term. The phrase might sound as if it refers to a ghost or other undead phantasm haunting an educational establishment like very old gum clinging to a trophy case. What ‘school spirit’ actually refers to is the belief one particular school is better than another.” — Daniel Handler

“It’s been two weeks. That’s like a decade in high school years.” — Rob Thomas

“My father sent me to a school that looked a lot like this one. A military academy in Pennsylvania. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. The Armitage School.” — William P. Kennedy

“Do you think you can handle all of your classes? Don’t forget your school happens to be one of the top public schools in the greater Los Angeles area. I’m sure the work load must be tremendous.” — Nathanael Coffman

“It’s the last day of school! Well, big brother, can you believe it? My last day of school. No more reading, writing, arithmetic! No more learning forever!” — Craig Schulz

“Private schools have diversity, mum. There are millionaires, billionaires.” — Tom Leopold

“Well, you should be excited at the chance to go back to school. I remember you wanted to return to school, and while it’s not the same one.” — Raita Honjou

“What I hate most about school is that my mom can’t read me my bedtime stories.” — Dan Houser

“Because now that you’re out of school, you’ll be taking a real test.” — Greg Johnson

“Just like in other parts of your life, you will get out of middle school what you put into it.” — Sandy Silverthorne

“You could just go to school, do the work and get through it, or you could really dive in and take advantage of all the cool opportunities that are now available to you.” — Sandy Silverthorne

“Extracurricular activities are the things that can make your middle school experience rich, fun, and rewarding.” — Sandy Silverthorne

“We treat people in the schools like children, not adults. We don’t treat them like professionals. The only way to attract bright people to education is to give them working conditions where they can use their minds.” — Carl D. Glickman

“The secret is to steal-to walk into another teacher’s classroom and say, ‘Give me that.’” — Harry Wong

“Well-prepared teachers are the most distributed school resource.” — Linda Darling-Hammond

“Even in schools with weak or threadbare cultures, it is usually possible to find some things worth celebrating. Those stories, values, traditions, heroes or heroines provide a viral starting point for updating, reinvigorating, and re-framing the school’s identity and culture.” — Lee G. Bolman

“Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.” — Michelangelo

“You can learn anything you need to learn to achieve any goal you set for yourself. There are no limits except the limits you place on your imagination.” — Brian Tracy

“The 5 most common words heard by a school principal: ‘Have you got a minute?’” — John Blaydes

“Child primary education is a crucial right for children.” — Fait Muedini

“Throughout the world, youth have stressed the importance of learning.” — Fait Muedini

“Education is arguably the most important policy option with regard to domestic and international development.” — Fait Muedini

“Education is first and foremost the vehicle through which societies reproduce themselves, both the inputs and the outputs in an education system.” — Fait Muedini

“Early education should be appropriate to the child’s age and nature, as part of a natural developmental process.” — E. D. Hirsch

“In a school that is a home for the mind, there is an inherent faith that all people can continue to improve their intellectual capacities throughout life.” — Arthur L. Costa

“As a school becomes a home for the mind, the vision increasingly pervades all of its communications.” — Arthur L. Costa

“Parents send their kids to school for many other reasons as well: intellectual, social, civic, aesthetic.” — Mike Rose

“Education in its broadest sense gives knowledge much more of a life worthy future than it would otherwise have, dying with the learner.” — David Perkins

“Classroom environment is one of the most important factors affecting student learning.” — Joan Young

“A classroom culture that defines mistakes as powerful yet safe learning opportunities opens everyone up to having a bit of fun.” —

“Ain’t no registration / Ain’t no student loan / You may not learn to read or write / But you will surely learn to roll dem bones / Get on back to school.” — Jimmy Buffett

“Found myself a matchbook / Beside some hotel bed / Opened it up and looked inside / And this is what it said / Get on back to school.” — Jimmy Buffett

“Moving at the High School Hop / Everybody’s hopping, everybody’s rocking / Bopping at the High School Hop.” — Jerry Lee Lewis

“Well open up, honey / It’s your lover boy me that’s a knocking / Why don’t you listen to me, sugar / All the cats are at the High School rocking.” — Jerry Lee Lewis

“I can’t wait to get to school each day / And wait for you to pass my way / And bell starts to ring / An angel starts to sing.” — Brian Holland

“Well we can’t salute ya can’t find a flag / If that don’t suit ya that’s a drag / School’s out for summer / School’s out forever / School’s been blown to pieces.” — Alice Cooper

“Let me tell you about scientific management / And the theft of its concealment / The Birmingham School of Business School / In Birmingham / It’s main theme” — Dave Bush

“Monday morning school day / Eat your breakfast, arrest your books / You’re late for school” — Corey Hart

“What did you learn in school today / Dear little boy of mine? / I learned that Washington never told a lie / I learned that soldiers seldom die / I learned that everybody’s free / And that’s what the teacher said to me” — Tom Paxton

“When some loud braggart tries to put me down / And says his school is great / I tell him right away / Now what’s the matter buddy / Ain’t you heard of my school / It’s number one in the state” — Michael Love

“So be true to your school now / Just like you would to your girl or guy / Be true to your school now / And let your colors fly” — Michael Love

“You never have to worry / If you save your lunch money / So you’ll have the chance / To get your ticket in a hurry / For the high school dance.” — Edmund Sylvers

“Dance to the beat of the band / We’re gonna dance at the high school dance / Boogie to the beat of the band, ooh / Boogie to the high school dance.” — Edmund Sylvers

“Remember back in high school / When you couldn’t wait / For the very first dance / You lay your homework was the rule / And just thinking about the music / Puts you in a trance.” — Edmund Sylvers

Funny School Quotes

“It’s easier to floss with barbed wire than admit you like someone in middle school.” — Laurie Halse Anderson

“School is learning things you don’t want to know, surrounded by people you wish you didn’t know, while working toward a future you don’t know will ever come.” — Dave Kellett

“The most important thing we learn at school is the fact that the most important things can’t be learned at school.” — Haruki Murakami

“In school they told me Practice makes perfect. And then they told me Nobody’s perfect, so then I stopped practicing.” — Steven Wright

“We all learn by experience but some of us have to go to summer school.” — Peter De Vries

“You can drag my body to school but my spirit refuses to go.” — Bill Watterson

“As long as teachers give tests, there will always be prayer in schools.” — unknown

“A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.” — Theodore Roosevelt

“There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done: school and prison.” — William Glasser

“School is one long illness with symptoms that switch every five minutes so you think it’s getting better or worse. But really it’s the same thing for years and years.” — Helen Oyeyemi

“As long as algebra is taught in school, there will be prayer in school.” — Cokie Roberts

“You send your child to the schoolmaster, but ’tis the schoolboys who educate him.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If there were no schools to take the children away from home part of the time, the insane asylums would be filled with mothers.” — Edgar W. Howe

“School is practice for future life, practice makes perfect and nobody’s perfect, so why practice?” — Billie Joe Armstrong

“You can’t learn in school what the world is going to do next year.” — Henry Ford

“In school one learns to ask stupid questions of life.” — Marty Rubin

“Show me the man who enjoyed his schooldays and I will show you a bully and a bore.” — Robert Morley

“School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is.” — Ivan Illich

“The trouble with school is they give you the answer, then they give you the exam. That’s not life….” — Ziad K. Abdelnour

“Schools kill time and creativity. Find ways to workaround these limitations.” — Gossy Ukanwoke

“In recalling their school years, students mostly remember their teachers, and not the courses they took.” — unknown

“There is nothing on earth intended for innocent people so horrible as a school.” — George Bernard Shaw

“No school without spectacular eccentrics and crazy hearts is worth attending.” — Saul Bellow

“I said school starts tomorrow. I didn’t say I was going to be there.” — Kim Harrison

“School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence.” — H. L. Mencken

“I go to school, but I never learn what I want to know.” — Bill Watterson

“When I say I miss school, I mean my friends and the fun. Not the school.” — unknown

“A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.” — George Santayana

“School means work and work means death. Let’s all go take a nap.” — Emma Shannon

“Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” — Charles Dederich

“The most important day of a person’s education is the first day of school, not Graduation Day.” — Harry Wong

“You’re off to great to great places. Today is your first day! Your mountain is waiting, so get on your way!” — Dr. Seuss

“I’ve always loved the first day of school better than the last day of school. Firsts are best because they are beginnings.” — Jenny Han

“All children start their school careers with sparkling imaginations, fertile minds, and a willingness to take risks with what they think.” — Ken Robinson

“School bells are ringing loud and clear; vacation’s over, school is here.” — Winifred C. Marshall

“Let us remember: One book, one pen, one child and one teacher can change the world.” — Malala Yousafzai

“It’s one of my favorite seasons of the year: Back to School. As a kid, I loved fresh school supplies, new outfits, the change of seasons, and the chance to crack open a new textbook.” — Dana Perino

“The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.” — Aristotle

“High school is what kind of grows you into the person you are. I have great memories, good and bad, some learning experiences and some that I’ll take with me the rest of my life.” — Giancarlo Stanton