Esquith Rafe Quotes

#1. I tried chemo, but chemo and I didn't agree, so we didn't persist.

Joan Kirner

#2. I want my kids to know that they're just as good and just as American as Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, or Dr. Martin Luther King. My worst fear is they will become ordinary.

Rafe Esquith

#3. I am asking teachers to understand that we must make the education relevant for the children. If they're only working for the tests or they're only working to please us, they're not going to be interested in school.

Rafe Esquith

#4. You hear terrible stories because there'll be a story about some terrible kid, but most of the kids I work with are terrific kids. They're poor, maybe their families are broken, so they're not coming home to a mom and dad and a nice dinner every night. But these kids are capable.

Rafe Esquith

#5. You've got to learn the footwork, the positioning, how to box out, how to pass, how to shoot your free throws. All these things are necessary, not to be the No. 1 player in the world, but maybe you can play against him.

Oscar Robertson

#6. There are plenty of smart people who get nowhere.

Paul Graham

#7. I travel a lot with my students. We go on the road and even learn about things like doing your laundry and managing your time. And maybe that's not on the test at the end of the year, but it's in the test of life and that's why my classroom is successful.

Rafe Esquith

#8. I always tell the kids that excellence is like pregnancy. You can't be a little bit pregnant. You either are or you're not.

Rafe Esquith

#9. I try to show the children how every lesson I teach them is going to be something they use in their real life. That's why my kids work so hard, not because I'm so cool. They're working for themselves.

Rafe Esquith

#10. Teach like your hair's on fire!

Rafe Esquith

#11. To injure your opponent is to injure yourself.

Paulo Coelho

#12. I have students who are PhDs in music who come back and scored the music and teach the kids the instruments that I don't know how to play. Those are the points of light, the former students.

Rafe Esquith

#13. I love Shakespeare. In Shakespeare, tragedy is not just something that's bad. It's something that could be good and is bad.

Rafe Esquith

#14. I don't think we expect enough of students. They just need someone to show them the way.

Rafe Esquith

#15. How could I ever be disappointed in you, Regan? You're a little damaged. So am I. Maybe we're both a little more fucked-up than normal, but we'll be nice and fucked-up together.

Jessica Clare

#16. The future was painted on a canvas of infinite reach; it entailed too many connections and joinings. Change one and you changed others. No amount of insight would enable a single individual to decipher it all.

Terry Brooks

#17. There's a difference between logic and what maybe people see when they're presented evidence and justice and that they're not always together.

Rafe Esquith

#18. Baseball is a religion in my classroom. It's a very important part of life, baseball.

Rafe Esquith

#19. The reason I love teaching, it's like being a miner. I find all these undiscovered jewels and, with the right motivation, they're amazed at what they can do. I have to show them their capability.

Rafe Esquith

#20. I'm a private contractor now. I choose my clients, not the other way around.

Becca Fitzpatrick

#21. Nothing ever happened except God.

Joyce Johnson

#22. The country where he lives is haunted by the ghost of an old forest. In the cleared fields where he gardens and pastures his horses it stood once, and will return. There will be a resurrection of the wild. Already it stands in wait at the pasture fences.

Wendell Berry

#23. Great literature should do some good to the reader: must quicken his perception though dull, and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions.

A.E. Housman

#24. I want my students to love to read. Reading is not a subject. Reading is a foundation of life, an activity that people who are engaged with the world do all the time

Rafe Esquith

#25. I've been broken too many times to break again.

Victoria Aveyard

#26. That's the beauty of art
we strive for perfection but never achieve it. The journey is everything.

Rafe Esquith

#27. Good teachers are an endangered species because they're giving up because of the tests and everything.

Rafe Esquith

#28. I think in spring, we don't want to wear makeup, we don't want to wear a ton of clothes, we just want everything to be easier.

Rachel Zoe