Bel Kaufman Quotes

#1. And that's it; that's why I want to teach; that's the one and only compensation: to make a permanent difference in the life of a child.

Bel Kaufman

#2. The preciousness of every moment is emphasized with every tick of the clock. Isn't it a magnificent day today?

Bel Kaufman

#3. Children are the true connoisseurs. What's precious to them has no price, only value.

Bel Kaufman

#4. Education is not a product: mark, diploma, job, money-in that order; it is a process, a never-ending one.

Bel Kaufman

#5. Love is the ultimate giving, an expression of one's best self.

Bel Kaufman

#6. I'll never retire as long as I live - that's like retiring from life! I'll never stop writing, teaching, lecturing. If you're in good health, living is exciting on its own.

Bel Kaufman

#7. If a teacher wants to know something why doesn't she look it up herself instead of making we students do it? We benefit ourselves more by listening to her, after all she's the teacher!

Bel Kaufman

#8. Learning is a process of mutual discovery for teacher and pupil. Keep an open mind to their unexpected responses.

Bel Kaufman

#9. I had used my sense of humor; I had called it proportion, perspective. But perspective is distance.

Bel Kaufman

#10. The heart has its reasons; it's the mind that's suspect.

Bel Kaufman

#11. I so enjoy being old because for the first time I don't have to do anything-work, teach, study. I feel very good about myself-and at my age I can say no to anything now if I don't want to do it. What a liberating word.

Bel Kaufman

#12. Never mind the cream; it will always rise to the top. It's the skim milk that needs good teachers.

Bel Kaufman

#13. Good teachers, like Tolstoy's happy families, are alike everywhere.

Bel Kaufman

#14. A teacher is frequently the only adult in the pupil's environment who treats him with respect.

Bel Kaufman

#15. I am writing this during my lunch period, because I need to reach towards the outside world of sanity, because I am overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the clerical work still to be done, and because at this hour of the morning normal ladies are still sleeping.

Bel Kaufman

#16. I like the word OLD. Not senior, that's for proms. Older? Older than whom? 'Old' is honorable and ripe

Bel Kaufman

#17. Laughter keeps you healthy. You can survive by seeing the humor in everything. Thumb your nose at sadness; turn the tables on tragedy. You can't laugh and be angry, you can't laugh and feel sad, you can't laugh and feel envious.

Bel Kaufman

#18. One of my students had written wistfully of a dream-school that would have windows with trees in them.

Bel Kaufman

#19. What makes you think you're so special? Just because you're a teacher? What he was really saying was: You are so special. You are my teacher. Then teach me, help me, Hey, Teach, I'm lost - which way do I go? I'm tired of going up the down staircase.

Bel Kaufman

#20. Teachers try to make us feel lower than themselves, maybe because this is because they feel lower than outside people. One teacher told me to get out of the room and never come back, which I did.

Bel Kaufman

#21. I want to point the way to something that should forever lure them, when the TV set is broken and the movie is over and the school bell has rung for the last time.

Bel Kaufman

#22. How can you wish on a turkey wishbone with a man who is capable of correcting a love letter?

Bel Kaufman

#23. People ate bread made of the shells of peas because there was no flour.

Bel Kaufman

#24. To the young, cliches seem freshly minted.

Bel Kaufman

#25. But if there is such a thing as social commitment in literature, I think it must manifest itself in a reader's awareness of the human condition, in the writer's touching some common nerve ending. I think this kind of social commitment, like a lady's slip, should be there but it must not show.

Bel Kaufman

#26. Time collapses and expands like an erratic accordion ...

Bel Kaufman

#27. Education can't make us all leaders, but it can teach us which leader to follow.

Bel Kaufman

#28. When giving comes directly from the heart, it can never disappoint or embarrass.

Bel Kaufman

#29. I feel no different than I felt at 99, 98 or 97. Just because you live a long time, you get all this attention. Just because you survived? Of course, I survived a lot.

Bel Kaufman

#30. Mythology is studied in the school system because most of us come from it.

Bel Kaufman

#31. To quote a noted Jewish humorist, Sholom Aleichem: "First comes health. You can always hang yourself later." As

Bel Kaufman