The warm and free days of summer are coming to an end and it’s time to head back to school again.
It’s a time of excitement and fun. But sometimes also a time of stress and nervousness.
So to help you, your kids and students if you’re a teacher I’d like to share 120 of the most positive, motivational, funny and stress reducing back to school quotes.
I hope you’ll find something here that’ll help make the start of this school year a happy, simple and inspired one.
Positive and Inspirational Back to School Quotes for Kids
“A new school year means new beginnings, new adventures, new friendships, and new challenges. The slate is clean and anything can happen.”
– Denise Witmer
“The more that you read, the more things you know, the more you learn, the more places you’ll go.”
– Dr. Seuss
“Minds are like parachutes, they only function when they are open.”
– James Dewar
“I’ve always loved the first day of school better than the last day of school. Firsts are best because they are beginnings.”
– Jenny Han
“Education is the key to unlocking the world, a passport to freedom.”
– Oprah Winfrey
“The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.”
– B.B. King
“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.”
– Dr. Seuss
“You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”
– A.A. Milne
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
– Lao Tzu
“What we learn with pleasure we never forget.”
– Alfred Mercier
“The capacity to learn is a gift; the ability to learn is a skill; the willingness to learn is a choice.”
– Brian Herbert
“The beginning is the most important part of the work.”
– Plato
“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”
– Arthur Ashe
“Be curious, not cool.”
– Ken Burns
“All the world is a laboratory to the inquiring mind.”
– Martin H. Fischer
“Dreams come a size too big so that we can grow into them.”
– Josie Bisset
“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
– Virginia Woolf
“Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.”
– Malcolm X
“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”
– Dorothy Parker
“He who opens a school door, closes a prison.”
– Victor Hugo
“Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.”
– Margaret Fuller
“A #2 pencil and a dream can take you anywhere.”
– Joyce Meyer
“School is a building which has four walls with tomorrow inside.”
– Lon Watters
Motivational Back to School Quotes for Students
“Just believe in yourself. Even if you don’t, pretend that you do, and at some point, you will.”
– Venus Williams
“This is a new year. A new beginning. And things will change.”
– Taylor Swift
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”
– Mark Twain
“Work hard, be kind and amazing things will happen.”
– Conan O’Brien
“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.”
– Robert Collier
“Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.”
– Zig Ziglar
“I’ve found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often.”
– Brian Tracy
“Make yourself proud.”
– Peter W. Smith
“Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.”
– Wayne Dyer
“Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”
– John R. Wooden
“Everything is a learning process: any time you fall over, it’s just teaching you to stand up the next time.”
– Joel Edgerton
“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
– Albert Einstein
“Nothing will work unless you do.”
– Maya Angelou
“Intelligence plus character – that is the true goal of education.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.
“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
– Mark Twain
“The first day of school is our second New Year’s. It is our day to make resolutions, to look backward to former lapses and triumphs and to look ahead, usually with a mix of anxiety and hope, to the year to come.”
– Mark Edmundon
“Although no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.”
– Carl Bard
“Become a possibilitarian. No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see possibilities — always see them, for they’re always there.”
– Norman Vincent Peale
“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.”
– Thomas Huxley
“He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche
“What I remember most about high school are the memories I created with my friends.”
– J.J. Watt
“Education doesn’t just make us smarter. It makes us whole.”
– Jill Biden
“They cannot stop me. I will get my education, if it is in the home, school, or anyplace.”
– Malala Yousafzai
“Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.”
– C. S. Lewis
“Do not wait until the conditions are perfect to begin. Beginning makes the conditions perfect.”
– Alan Cohen
Short Back to School Quotes for Teachers
“Let us remember: one book, one pen, one child and one teacher can change the world.”
– Malala Yousafzai
“Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself.”
– Chinese Proverb
“Every student can learn, just not on the same day or in the same way.”
– George Evans
“Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best.”
– Bob Talbert
“To be good is noble, but to teach others how to be good is nobler – and less trouble.”
– Mark Twain
“The dream begins, most of the time, with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you on to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called truth.”
– Dan Rather
“The job of an educator is to teach students to see the vitality in themselves.”
– Joseph Campbell
“The future of the world is in my classroom today.”
– Ivan Welton Fitzwater
“A sense of curiosity is nature’s original school of education.”
– Smiley Blanton
“Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher.”
– Japanese Proverb
“The duties of a teacher are neither few nor small, but they elevate the mind and give energy to the character.”
– Dorothea Dix
“You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.”
– Clay P. Bedford
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve.”
– Roger Lewin
“If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people.”
– Chinese Proverb
“Education is the key to success in life, and teachers make a lasting impact in the lives of their students.”
– Solomon Ortiz
“Our job is to teach the students we have, not the ones we would like to have. Not the ones we used to have. Those we have right now. All of them.”
– Dr. Kevin Maxwell
“The most important day of a person’s education is the first day of school, not Graduation Day.”
– Harry Wong
“If you have to put someone on a pedestal, put teachers. They are society’s heroes.”
– Guy Kawasaki
“There is nothing on earth as important as a helpful and kind teacher for knowledge but also for building confidence as a child.”
– Unknown
“The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.”
– Mark Van Doren
Funny Back to School Quotes and Sayings
“Respect your parents. They passed school without Google.”
– Unknown
“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”
– Andy McIntyre
“Labor Day is a glorious holiday because your child will be going back to school the next day. It would have been called Independence Day, but that name was already taken.”
– Bill Dodds
“Some students drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.”
– E.C. McKenzie
“I said school starts tomorrow. I didn’t say I was going to be there.”
– Kim Harrison
“School is a lot like toilet paper. You only miss it when it’s gone.”
– Unknown
“You can drag my body to school but my spirit refuses to go.”
– Bill Watterson
“The human brain is special. It starts working as soon as you get up and it doesn’t stop until you get to school.”
– Milton Berle
“We all learn by experience, but some of us have to go to summer school.”
– Peter De Vries
“My school was so tough the school newspaper had an obituary column.”
– Norm Crosby
“First month of school: Look nice and dress up. Rest of the school year: Rock the homeless grandma look.”
– Unknown
“I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.”
– Lily Tomlin
“As long as teachers give tests, there will always be prayer in schools.”
– Unknown
“Work hard, nap hard.”
– Demi Lovato
“You can lead a boy to college, but you cannot make him think.”
– Elbert Hubbard
“It’s not that I hate school. I just hate waking up early in the morning.”
– Unknown
“Take your risks now, as you grow older you become more fearful and less flexible. And I mean that literally. I hurt my knee this week on the treadmill, and it wasn’t even on.”
– Amy Poehler
“The first day of school: the day when the countdown to the last day of the school begins.”
– Unknown
“If there were no schools to take the children away from home part of the time, the insane asylums would be filled with mothers.”
– Edgar W. Howe
“There is only one thing bigger than a kindergartner’s curiosity, and that’s their backpack.”
– Unknown
“Stand firm in your refusal to remain conscious during algebra. In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra.”
– Fran Lebowitz
“Cheers to the first day of a new school year and the beginning of the Thanksgiving break countdown.”
– Unknown
“I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.”
– Steven Wright
“School bells are ringing loud and clear; vacation’s over, school is here.”
– Winifred C. Marshal
“There’s no tired like teacher tired at the beginning of a school year!”
– Unknown
“The difference between school and life? In school, you’re taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you’re given a test that teaches you a lesson.”
– Tom Bodett
Uplifting and Stress Reducing Back to School Quotes for Parents
“Don’t try hard to fit in, and certainly don’t try so hard to be different… just try hard to be you.”
– Zendaya
“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying: I will try again tomorrow.”
– Mary Anne Radmacher
“I promise you nothing is as chaotic as it seems. Nothing is worth diminishing your health. Nothing is worth poisoning yourself into stress, anxiety, and fear.”
– Steve Maraboli
“If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.”
– E. Joseph Cossman
“One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from a horse master. He told me to go slow to go fast. I think that applies to everything in life. We live as though there aren’t enough hours in the day but if we do each thing calmly and carefully we will get it done quicker and with much less stress.”
– Viggo Mortensen
“Being fearless isn’t being 100 percent not fearful, it’s being terrified but you jump anyway.”
– Taylor Swift
“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.”
– Maya Angelou
“Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass. It’s about learning how to dance in the rain.”
– Vivian Greene
“Be nice to yourself. It’s hard to be happy when someone’s mean to you all the time.”
– Christine Arylo
“Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time.”
– Chinese Proverb
“Children are apt to live up to what you believe of them.”
– Lady Bird Johnson
“It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.”
– Maya Angelou
“When you get back from school, Mommy and Daddy will be waiting for you. Go on, make new friends, meet some nice teachers and learn something new on your first day!”
– Unknown
“In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.”
– Phil Collins
“The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.”
– Herbert Spencer
“I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study… would be about the same as getting into paradise.”
– Booker T. Washington
“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”
– James Baldwin
“All children start their school careers with sparkling imaginations, fertile minds, and a willingness to take risks with what they think.”
– Ken Robinson
“Encourage kids to be creative without worrying about being perfect.”
– Dav Pilkey
“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of becoming.”
– Goethe
“The highest result of education is tolerance.”
– Helen Keller
“Learn as much as you can while you are young, since life becomes too busy later.”
– Dana Stewart Scott
“We can easily manage if we will only take, each day, the burden appointed to it. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday’s burden over again today, and then add the burden of the morrow before we are required to bear it.”
– John Newton
Want more inspiration and motivation for school? Then have a look at these motivational quotes for students, the positive first day of school quotes here and also these short, deep and motivational quotes.