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Laughter keeps you healthy. You can survive by seeing the humor in everything. Thumb your nose at sadness; turn the tables on tragedy.

Bel Kaufman

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

People Teachers Trying
“Let it be a challenge to you” means you’re stuck with it; “interpersonal relationships” is a fight between kids; “ancillary civic agencies for supportive discipline” means call the cops.
BEL KAUFMAN

Cops Fight Relationship Stuck
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

Children Differences Want
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

Broken Reading School
Education is not a product: mark, diploma, job, money-in that order; it is a process, a never-ending one.
BEL KAUFMAN

Education Jobs Teaching
You can’t laugh and be angry, you can’t laugh and feel sad, you can’t laugh and feel envious.
BEL KAUFMAN

Angry Envious Laughing Sad
People ate bread made of the shells of peas because there was no flour.
BEL KAUFMAN

Bread People Shells
… good teachers, like Tolstoy’s happy families, are alike everywhere.
BEL KAUFMAN

Good Teacher Teaching
I had used my sense of humor; I had called it proportion, perspective. But perspective is distance.
BEL KAUFMAN

Distance Perspective Sense Of Humor
Education can’t make us all leaders, but it can teach us which leader to follow.
BEL KAUFMAN

Knowledge Leader School
Time collapses and expands like an erratic accordion.
BEL KAUFMAN

Collapse Erratic Time
Learning is a process of mutual discovery for teacher and pupil. Keep an open mind to their unexpected responses.
BEL KAUFMAN

Discovery Mind Teacher
“Language Arts Dept.” is the English office; “literature based on child’s reading level and experiential background” means that’s all they’ve got in the Book Room; “non-academic-minded” is a delinquent; and “It has come to my attention” means you’re in trouble.
BEL KAUFMAN

Book Experimental Level Mindset
Never mind the cream; it will always rise to the top. It’s the skim milk that needs good teachers.
BEL KAUFMAN

Mind Needs Teacher
To the outside world, of course, this job is a cinch: 9 to 3, five days a week, two months’ summer vacation with pay, all legal holidays, prestige and respect.
BEL KAUFMAN

Morning Mother Summer
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

Age Firsts Want

Laughter keeps you healthy. You can survive by seeing the humor in everything. Thumb your nose at sadness; turn the tables on tragedy.

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Laughter keeps you healthy. You can survive by seeing the humor in everything. Thumb your nose at sadness; turn the tables on tragedy.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Bel Kaufman Quotes