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 KAUFMANAnd 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.
More Bel Kaufman Quotes
-
-
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 -
My mother, for example, has the pleasant notion that my day consists of nodding graciously to the rustle of starched curtsies and a chorus of respectful voices bidding me good morning.
BEL KAUFMAN -
To the young, cliches seem freshly minted.
BEL KAUFMAN -
Education is not a product: mark, diploma, job, money-in that order; it is a process, a never-ending one.
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 -
I had used my sense of humor; I had called it proportion, perspective. But perspective is distance.
BEL KAUFMAN -
Love is the ultimate giving, an expression of one’s best self.
BEL KAUFMAN -
People ate bread made of the shells of peas because there was no flour.
BEL KAUFMAN -
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 -
Children are the true connoisseurs. What’s precious to them has no price, only value.
BEL KAUFMAN -
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 -
The clerical work is par for the course. “Keep on file in numerical order” means throw in wastebasket. You’ll soon learn the language.
BEL KAUFMAN -
I suggest just Good and Bad at the end of the term on report cards. Or maybe nothing. Frank Allen
BEL KAUFMAN -
I like the word OLD. Not senior, that’s for proms. Older? Older than whom? ‘Old’ is honorable and ripe
BEL KAUFMAN -
Education can’t make us all leaders, but it can teach us which leader to follow.
BEL KAUFMAN