"How can he remember well his ignorance -- which his growth requires -- who has so often to use his knowledge." Henry David Thoreau, Walden

"Unlike most people, teachers don't confront the agony of choice between God and Mammon. They don't have to be exceptional people -- they do holy work as a routine obligation of their careers. The trustees tell me my job is to instruct the young on the splendors of the true, the good, and the beautiful, and they regularly send me a check for my pains. Less fortunate people, occupied with selling companies to each other, are obliged to redeem their lives outside their work." (Prof. Marvin Bressler on the occasion of his retirement from teaching)

also from Prof. Bressler:

"Teachers may justly reply to the taunt, 'those who can, do, and those who can't, teach' in the words of the nineteenth century divine: 'We are both engaged in the Lord's work, you in your way, and I in His.'"

"Universities have students, I like to say, to teach the professors." John Archibald Wheeler, who passed away on April 13, 2008 at the age of 96. Wheeler taught Physics at Princeton (1938-1976), and then directed the Center for Theoretical Physics, Univ. of Texas-Austin (1976-1986).

What they undertook to do They brought to pass; All things hang like a drop of dew Upon a blade of grass. "Gratitude to the Unknown Instructors" by William Butler Yeats

"Provide for the esoteric, exotic, and impractical in the curriculum; the practical and pedestrian will take care of itself. If it does not, you have not lost much anyway." Herman B Wells (1902-2000; President of the Univ. of Indiana, 1938-1962)