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Earlier this year, the right training combined with the right timing helped Julian save a toddler’s life. Julian, a volunteer paramedic and firefighter, happened to be driving past a stranger’s house when he noticed a woman outside screaming into two cell phones. Thinking she may be in trouble, he stopped to help. The woman was on the phone with 911 Dispatch. Her son, a 2-year-old boy named Decker, was nearly unconscious at the foot of the stairwell just inside the door. The woman was outside waiting for the ambulance, confused before realizing she was on the line with the wrong dispatch. The confusion meant that it took several minutes for an ambulance to arrive. In those precious moments, Julian began CPR and kept Decker alive until paramedics arrived. Once he got the ER, the medical team removed a pushpin that was lodged in his throat, choking him. Decker’s mother calls Julian her son’s guardian angel. Julian is currently serving with the United States Armed Forces as a medic doing EMS work in Afghanistan.
Please note – we’ve changed the voting requirements this month. In order to vote, you’ll have to create an account and log in to vote. Once you register, you’ll be taken directly to the voting page.
Don’t want to register? You can still see the voting results – just click here.
Fran C. | Pennsylvania Firefighter & Nurse
On July 4, 2012, Fran entered a smoke-filled home and heard a woman in distress on the 2nd floor. When Fran found her, she was trapped, panicked and out of breathe from breathing in too much smoke. In a split-second decision, Fran took a big breath, removed his tank and put it on the woman. Both got out safely, although Fran was hospitalized for smoke inhalation. Fran later met the woman he saved, and presented her with about $500 of his own overtime pay to help her and her family. Fran became a firefighter after following in the footsteps of his retired Fire Captain father.
When Fran isn’t fighting fires, he works as a part time Nurse at Cancer Treatment Centers of America. Before becoming a full time firefighter, he worked as a Paramedic.
Nancy J. | Wisconsin Educator
Nancy J. has been enthusiastically servings as the Arrowhead High School Choir Director for almost 30 years. Known for her passion and motivation, Nancy works to make each and every student a part of the team. She uses creativity in her teaching to keep her high school students engaged and enthusiastic about the fine arts. Her hard work shows. Every year, choir performances pack the house and lines to buy performance tickets stretch out the door. Nancy goes above and beyond to highlight her students’ achievements: decorating the halls for their performances, taking headshots so they feel like stars, and accompanying them to weekend contests. Due to Nancy’s unceasing hard work, her high school’s choir and theatre programs have a reputation for greatness.
Corporal Stan P | Georgia Police Officer
When Officer Phillips answered a call about an aggressive dog, he arrived at the scene to find a vicious attack in progress. The dog was biting the victim, a 5-year-old little girl named Lilly, on the face and neck. Officer Phillips rushed to her aid and was able to free her from the dog. The girl was immediately airlifted to the hospital with life-threatening injuries, including a missing ear. After saving the girl’s life, Officer Phillips continued to go visit her in the hospital, despite the hour drive each way, and even arranged for donations to pay for her reconstructive surgery. After she was released from the hospital, Officer Phillips helped work with churches and charities to raise money for her continued recovery. Stan has worked on a crime suppression units, SWAT, and road patrols (among others) and coworkers note his dedication and noteworthy impact on high crime areas- calling him a ‘go to’ guy in the field.
When shots rang out in the hospital where Robert works, his first thought was the victim’s safety. As others dropped to the floor, Robert ran to aid of the gunshot victim- a physician who worked at the hospital. After rushing to get his patient to a safe location to receive medical attention, Robert took cover and provided comfort to distraught nursing students. Robert’s coworkers say this kind of heroic action is not out of character for a man who cares deeply about his patients. Robert is an integral member of the Haiti Outreach Mission (HOM). HOM works to bring mobile clinics to distant mountain locations where Robert helps triage patients in need. Closer to home, Robert also speaks out on behalf of his patients, many of whom are victims of violence, by speaking at anti-violence rallies.
Constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon. – Dag Hammarskjold
Nurses dispense comfort, compassion, and caring without even a prescription. -Val Saintsbury
To do what nobody else will do, a way that nobody else can do, in spite of all we go through; is to be a nurse. – Rawsi Williams
Nurses are a unique kind. They have this insatiable need to care for others, which is both their biggest strength and fatal flaw. –Dr. Jean Watson
Our job as Nurses is to cushion the sorrow and celebrate the joy, every day, while we are ‘just doing our jobs.’ -Christine Belle
Healing yourself is connected with healing others. -Yoko Ono
The door that nobody else will go in at, seems always to swing open widely for me. -Clara Barton
To make a difference in someone’s life, you don’t have to be brilliant, rich, beautiful or perfect. You just have to care. -Mandy Hale
You don’t build a house without its foundation. You don’t build a hospital without its Nurses. –Anonymous
Nurses Know: The mind can only look. The heart can truly see. -Carol Gino
Nurses quietly go about their work in a noble profession, uncelebrated soldiers toiling through the days and nights in service to the sick, the injured and the dying. -Steve Lopez
You’re going to be there when a lot of people are born, and when a lot of people die. In most every culture, such moments are regarded as sacred and private, made special by a divine presence. No one on Earth would be welcomed, but you’re personally invited. What an honor that is. -Thom Dick
They may forget your name, but they will never forget how you made them feel. – Maya Angelou
America’s nurses are the beating heart of our medical system. – President Barack Obama
The best cure for the body is a quiet mind. – Napoleon
The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed. It blesses him that gives and him that takes. – Unknown
The heart that gives, gathers. -Tao Te Ching
Nine-tenths of our sickness can be prevented by right thinking plus right hygiene–nine-tenths of it! -Henry Miller
The nurse who can smile when things go wrong is probably going off duty.
We’re armored against our own troubles. We can’t afford to give in to despair. Then you see someone else struggling, and it breaks your… heart. – Sean Stewart
Diagnosis is not the end, but the beginning of practice. – Martin H. Fischer
Medicine is the only profession that labours incessantly to destroy the reason for its own existence. – James Bryce
The patient does not care about your science; what he wants to know is, can you cure him? -Martin H. Fischer
It is not a case we are treating; it is a living, palpitating, alas, too often suffering fellow creature. – John Brown
Disease is war with the laws of our being, and all war, as a great general has said, is hell. – Lewis G. Janes
It is easy to get a thousand prescriptions but hard to get one single remedy. – Chinese Proverb
Despite all our toil and progress, the art of medicine still falls somewhere between trout casting and spook writing. – Ben Hecht
Cancer is a word, not a sentence. – John Diamond
Have a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires, a touch that never hurts. – Charles Dickens
Nursing is an art: and if it is to be made an art, it requires an exclusive devotion as hard a preparation, as any painter’s or sculptor’s work; for what is the having to do with dead canvas or dead marble, compared with having to do with the living body, the temple of God’s spirit? It is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts. – Florence Nightingale
The trained nurse has become one of the great blessings of humanity, taking a place beside the physician and the priest. – William Osler
Nursing is not for everyone. It takes a very strong, intelligent, and compassionate person to take on the ills of the world with passion and purpose and work to maintain the health and well-being of the planet. No wonder we’re exhausted at the end of the day! – Donna Wilk Cardillo
A nurse will always give us hope, an angel with a stethoscope. – Terri Guillemets
It is not how much you do, but how much love you put in the doing. — Mother Theresa
There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something better tomorrow. — Orison Swett Marden
Compassion automatically invites you to relate with people because you no longer regard people as a drain on your energy. — Chogyam Trungpa
Compassion is a call, a demand of nature, to relieve the unhappy as hunger is a natural call for food. — Joseph Butler
Nursing isn’t what you do it’s who you are. -Unknown
Character is not made in a crisis it is only exhibited. – Rose Dorothy Freeman
I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love. -Mother Teresa
Do you want to speak to the Doctor in charge, or the Nurse who really knows what is going on? -Unknown
Always thank your nurse. Sometimes they’re the only one between you and a hearse. – Warren Beatty
In every community, there is work to be done. In every nation there are wounds to heal. In every heart there is the power to do it. –Marianne Williamson
Healing is a matter of time but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity. – Hippocrates
Our job is to love people. When it hurts. When it’s awkward. When it’s uncool and embarrassing. Our job is to stand together, to carry the burdens of one another and to meet each other in our questions. – Jamie Tworkowksi
Being a nurse means to hold all your own tears and start drawing smiles on people’s faces. – Dana Basem
Nursing is Sacrificing with and for Humanity! – Unknown
Every Nurse is Angel with a Key for Healthy Community! All in Caring for Patients is part of Nursing Soul! – Aleksandar Radenovi
Bound by paperwork, short on hands, sleep, and energy… nurses are rarely short on caring. – Sharon Hudacek
When I think about all the patients and their loved ones that I have worked with over the years, I know most of them don’t remember me nor I them. But I do know that I gave a little piece of myself to each of them and they to me and those threads make up the beautiful tapestry in my mind that is my career in nursing. – Donna Wilk Cardillo
Nurses: one of the few blessings of being ill. – Sara Moss-Wolfe
If love can’t cure it, nurses can. – Unknown
The most important practical lesson than can be given to nurses is to teach them what to observe. – Florence Nightingale
Nurses serve their patients in the most important capacities. We know that they serve as our first lines of communication when something goes wrong or when we are concerned about health. – Lois Capps
Panic plays no part in the training of a nurse. – Elizabeth Kenny
Whether a person is a male or female, a nurse is a nurse. – Gary Veale
The character of the nurse is as important as the knowledge she possesses. – Carolyn Jarvis
You treat a disease: You win, you lose. You treat a person, I guarantee you win—no matter the outcome. — Patch Adams
In a world where there is so much to be done, I felt strongly impressed that there must be something for me to do. — Dorothea Dix (superintendent of women nurses for the Union Army)
I am of certain convinced that the greatest heroes are those who do their duty in the daily grind of domestic affairs whilst the world whirls as a maddening dreidel. – Florence Nightingale
Our job is to teach the student 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
Children will not remember you for the material things you provided but for the feeling that you cherished them. – Richard L. Evans
Children must be taught how to think, not what to think. –Margaret Mead
The self taught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know a tenth as much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers. -Mark Twain
Be curious, not judgmental. -Walt Whitman
A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge. -George R.R. Martin
Children’s talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives. -Maya Angelou
Your education is worth what Your are worth. -Anon
You must master a new way to think before you can master a new way to be. -Marianne Williamson
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers. -Charles William Eliot
From kindergarten to college, certain teachers engaged my curiosity and motivated me to learn. While I was not the best student, their efforts left a lasting impact. -George Lucas
Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well. –Aristotle
Don’t try to fix the students, fix ourselves first. The good teacher makes the poor student good and the good student superior. When our students fail, we as teacher, t0o, have failed. -Marva Collins
Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers. —attributed to Socrates
What nobler employment, or more valuable to the state, than that of the man who instructs the rising generation. -Marcus Tullius Cicero
We teachers are rather good at magic, you know.-J.K. Rowling
True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us. –Socrates
It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge. -Einstein
If you employed study, thinking, and planning time daily, you could develop and use the power that can change the course of your destiny. -W. Clement Stone
You cant scare me. I teach.
You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother. -Albert Einstein
Always walk through life as if you have something new to learn and you will. -Vernon Howard
Wisdom is the lesson learned, applied. –Rick Beneteau
Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important. -Bill Gates
If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn’t need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around. -Jim Rohn
Learning is not compulsory but neither is survival. -W. Edwards Deming
We are giving some lucky educators a $2,500 academic award!
If you could use some extra cash for your classroom, click here to enter!
Even More Popular Teacher Quotes Below
Imagination decides everything. -Blaise Pascal
The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you. –BB King
Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardour, for their curiosity and tolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision. -Aldous Huxley
To nourish and raise children against odds is in any time, any place, more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons. –Marilyn French
If you would thoroughly know anything, teach it to others. –Tyron Edwards
He is to be educated not because he’s to make shoes, nails, and pins, but because he is a man. -William Ellery Channing
The scientific mind does not so much provide the right answers as ask the right questions. –Claude Levi-Strauss
Nothing will stop you being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake. -John Cleese
Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master. -Leonardo da Vinci
A good teacher is like a candle- it comsumes itself to light the way for others. -Unknown
What is done to children, they will do to society. -Karl Menninger
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army. -Edward Everett
The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery. -Mark Van Doren
The only reason I always try to meet and know the parents better is because it helps me to forgive their children. -Louise Johannot
Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. -Gilbert K. Chesterton
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. -William Butlet Yeats
My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. -Maya Angelou
The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize. -Franklin D. Roosevelt
He who opens a school door, closes a prison. -Victor Hugo
In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day’s work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years. -Jacques Barzun
The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called “truth.” -Dan Rather
If a doctor, lawyer, or dentist had 40 people in his office at one time, all of whom had different needs, and some of whom didn’t want to be there and were causing trouble, and the doctor, lawyer, or dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all with professional excellence for nine months, then he might have some conception of the classroom teacher’s job. -Donald D. Quinn
Modern cynics and skeptics… see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing. -John F. Kennedy
Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater. –Gail Godwin
Most teachers have little control over school policy or curriculum or choice of texts or special placement of students, but most have a great deal of autonomy inside the classroom. To a degree shared by only a few other occupations, such as police work, public education rests precariously on the skill and virtue of the people at the bottom of the institutional pyramid. -Tracy Kidder
A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. -Henry Brooks Adams
If you have knowledge, let others light their candles at it. –Margaret Fuller
The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. -William Arthur Ward
What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches. -Karl Menninger
Teachers who inspire know that teaching is like cultivating a garden, and those who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers.
The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind. -Kahlil Gibran
To teach is to learn twice. -Joseph Joubert, Pensées, 1842
Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource. -John F. Kennedy
Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation. -John F. Kennedy
I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well. -Alexander the Great
We are giving some lucky educators a $2,500 academic award!
If you could use some extra cash for your classroom, click here to enter!
The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education. –Plutarch
“The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.” -Khalil Gibran
Teachers are expected to reach unattainable goals with inadequate tools. The miracle is that at times they accomplish this impossible task. —Haim Ginott
Teachers are the only professionals who have to respond to bells every forty-five minutes and come out fighting. —Frank McCourt
Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition. —Jacques Martin Barzun
There is no recipe to be a great teacher, that’s what is unique about them. -Robert Sternberg
I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. — John Steinbeck
I got into acting because my teachers kept nudging me into it. The power a teacher has to influence someone is so great. I can’t think of a profession I have more respect for. — Jon Hamm
In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less. -Lee Iacocc
The need to be right all the time is the biggest bar to new ideas. It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong than to be always right by having no ideas at all. –Edward de Bour
Imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future. -Charles F. Kettering
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or self-confidence. – Robert Frost
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. –Einstein
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. -Aristotle
Children will not remember you for the material things you provided. But for the feeling that you cherished them. -Richard L Evans
Creativity is intelligence having fun. -Einstein
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
There is no greater gift you can give or receive than to honor your calling. It’s why you were born. And how you become most truly alive. –Oprah
If you cant explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough. –Einstein
Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself. -Rumi
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. –Aristotle
Every student can learn, just not on the same day, or in the same way. -George Evans
Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new. -Og Mandino
Tell if you know, ask if you don’t. -Duane Alan Hahn
Who dares to teach must never cease to learn. -John Cotton Dana
Life affords no greater responsibility, no greater privilege, than the raising of the next generation. –Everett Coop
It is only the ignorant who despise education. –Publilius Syrus
You can’t learn less. –Buckminster Fuller
Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. -John Dewey
Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living. -John Dewey
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him. -Galileo Galilei
You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother. -Albert Einstein
There is only one way… to get anybody to do anything. And that is by making the other person want to do it. –Dale Carnegie
Please note – we’ve changed the voting requirements this month. In order to vote, you’ll have to create an account and log in to vote. Once you register, you’ll be taken directly to the voting page.
Don’t want to register? You can still see the voting results – just click here.
Name: Jeff B.
Profession: Volunteer Firefighter/EMT
In 2012, Jeff responded to a medical emergency. As the 34-year volunteer Firefighter and EMT loaded his patient into an ambulance, a nearby fire truck popped out of gear and started to roll. As the truck came towards them both, Jeff shoved his patient out of the way- saving her life as he took the entire brunt of the impact. The force of the hit pinned Jeff between the vehicles, breaking both femurs, two bones in one shin and his pelvis in two spots. After several surgeries and months of recovery, Jeff’s surgeon told him his injuries would prevent him from firefighting. He now continues to work full time as a director of sales.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgALcX84IpI
Name: Angela W.
Profession: EMT
Emergency Medical Technician Angela W. was diagnosed with an aggressive type of breast cancer on her birthday last year. Angela faced her diagnosis with bravery and determination, muscling through radiation and chemotherapy with resolve and an upbeat attitude. Angela even returned to work as an EMT while still undergoing treatment. Some days, she would head to work for 12 or 24-hour shifts straight from radiation therapy. Now a breast cancer survivor, Angela thanks her immediate family and her EMS family for their support and encouragement during her recovery.
Name: September S.
Profession: Registered Nurse
September is a registered nurse raising three children while her husband is deployed in Afghanistan. As her husband puts it, “If superwoman did exist on this planet, her alter ego is September.” Watch the video below to hear directly from him what makes this Nurse such a hero:
Name: Steve H.
Profession: Educator
Steve is a Special Ed Behavioral Disorders teacher working with students of all ages. His coworkers describe Steve’s effect on his students as ‘amazing.’ Fellow teachers point out that his students are prepared and confident after his classes. They note the ‘happy changes’ that Steve helps his students make- changes that stay with them long after they have left his classroom. Steve not only teaches his students, he strives to make them feel important and needed. Outside of the classroom, Steve and his wife train guide dogs for the blind. So far, they have trained ten dogs- all of whom graduated on to the next level of training!
Name: Michael D.
Profession: Law Enforcement
In September 2012, San Diego County Sheriff’s Deputies were attempting to arrest a suspect when the suspect began shooting a high-powered rifle from a 2nd story window- hitting and wounding two officers. Off-duty SWAT Officer DeWitt, a member of the department’s Gang Suppression Team, happened to be driving by the scene in his SWAT vehicle when he noticed the disturbance. He immediately donned his vest, armed himself, and offered his service. Upon learning that an injured officer was still in the line of fire, DeWitt assembled a team, gave assignments, and proceeded in to retrieve the officer. The team reached the wounded officer, but realizing they were moving too slow, Officer DeWitt slung his weapon over his back–foregoing his own safety– to give full physical assistance and lessen the team’s time in the line of fire. While the team used DeWitt’s first aid kit to attend to the officer’s injuries, DeWitt noticed a woman and two small children running from the apartment complex in panic. Realizing that they were running into the line of fire, DeWitt left his position of safety to run and pick up one child as the woman carried the other to safety. DeWitt then returned to the apartment complex to make sure the second wounded officer was being cared for. He was nominated by his fellow law enforcement officers who note his extreme bravery, leadership, and judgment skills.
