Reading is one of the most important skills that our children can learn. Having a good grasp of language will help them in their future lives, regardless of the path they take.
Whether they’re planning to head to college or into the working world, being a skilled reader is an essential skill that will help them and it all begins in the classroom.
Reading can also be a great pleasure. Reading non-fiction books can transport us away to a different world and give us some escapism regardless of how our real life is progressing.
It can introduce us to new worlds and new cultures and expose us to new ways of thinking that we have never experienced before.
However, getting students to read is often an uphill battle. For every child that loves to read, there is a child that doesn’t, and trying to get the importance of reading understood is a trial for even the most experienced and talented teacher.
That’s where inspirational reading quotes can help. When you’re struggling to find the words to explain why reading is important, why not turn to the words of famous authors, celebrities, and philosophers instead?
In this article, we have a list of the 53 best classroom reading quotes to try today. You can decorate your classroom with these quotes and inspire your students to pick up a book.
Let’s get started!
Reading Quotes For Younger Readers
In this section, we’ve listed some quotes that we think are best suited for younger children and classrooms.
These are suitable for older readers as well, but they may be shorter, easier to understand, or by people more relevant to younger readers.
1. “Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.” – Margaret Fuller
2. “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” – Frederick Douglass
3. “Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere.” – Mary Schmich
4. “There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.” – Walt Disney
5, “There are many little ways to enlarge your world. Love of books is the best of all.” – Jacqueline Kennedy
6. “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more you learn, the more places you’ll go.” – Dr. Seuss, ‘I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!’
7. “Be awesome! Be a book nut!” – Dr. Seuss
8. “You can find magic wherever you look. Sit back and relax all you need is a book!” – Dr. Seuss
9. “Books train your mind to imagination to think big.” – Taylor Swift
10. “So please, oh PLEASE, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install, A lovely bookshelf on the wall.” – Roald Dahl, ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’
11. “If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books.” – Roald Dahl
12. “The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad.
She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She traveled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.” – Roald Dahl, ‘Matilda’
13. “So many books, so little time.” – Frank Zappa
14. “The whole world opened up to me when I learned to read.” – Mary McLeod Bethune
15. “A book is like a garden, carried in the pocket.” – Chinese Proverb
16. “A child who reads will be an adult who thinks.” – Unknown
17. “Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.” – Henry David Thoreau
18. “I am a part of everything that I have read.” – Theodore Roosevelt
19. “I cannot live without books.” – Thomas Jefferson
20. ”Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.” – Harry S. Truman
21. “In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own.” – Anna Quindlen
22. “I will defend the importance of bedtime stories to my last gasp.” – J.K Rowling
23, “Never put off till tomorrow the book you can read today.” – Holbrook Jackson
24, “Readers are lucky – they will never be bored or lonely.” – Natalie Babbitt
25. “The dearest ones of time, the strongest friends of the soul: books.” – Emily Dickinson
26. “Reading brings us unknown friends.” – Mortimer J. Adler
27. “Turn the pages of your imagination … READ!” – Unknown
Reading Quotes For Older Readers
The quotes in this section are better suited to older readers. The quotes may be longer, more complicated, or by people that older children are more likely to be familiar with.
28. “There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.” – Ray Bradbury
29. “The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest (people) of the past centuries.” – Descartes
30. “No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.” – Lady Montagu
31. “I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.” – Groucho Marx
32. “Books are a uniquely portable magic.” – Stephen King
33. “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” – Richard Steele
34. “Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.” – Edmund Burke
35. “To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled is a spark.” – Victor Hugo
36. “I do not read a book; I hold a conversation with the author.” – Elbert Hubbard
37. “Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.” – James Russell Lowell
38. “Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled “This could change your life.” – Helen Exley
39. “Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.” – Maya Angelou
40. “The only way to do all the things you’d like to do is to read.” – Tom Clancy
41. “Some women have a weakness for shoes. I can go barefoot if necessary. I have a weakness for books.” – Oprah Winfrey
42. “If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” – Oscar Wilde
43. “A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.” – Charles Baudelaire
44. “Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.” – Henry Ward Beecher
45. “It is books that are the key to the wide world; if you can’t do anything else, read all that you can.” – Jane Hamilton
46. “Books are the compasses and telescopes and sextants and charts which other men have prepared to help us navigate the dangerous seas of human life.” – Jesse Lee Bennett
47. “Few things leave a deeper mark on the reader, than the first book that finds its way to his heart.” – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
48. “My alma mater was books, a good library. I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.” – Malcolm X
49. “When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.” – Enrique Jardiel Poncela
50. “In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.” – Mortimer J. Adler
51. “I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.” – Bill Gates
52. ”It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.” – S.I. Hayakawa
53. “No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.” – Confucius
Final Thoughts
In this article, we listed the 53 best classroom reading quotes to try today. We included a variety of different quotes from different people so there is sure to be a quote here that will resonate with your students.
Some of the quotes are short and succinct and others are long, but they’re all inspirational.
Reading is one of the most important skills we can learn and the majority of our learning occurs in the classroom.
If a child can finish school as a skilled reader who enjoys cracking open a book, then they will find their future will be that little bit easier.
We hope that the reading quotes in this article will soon decorate your classroom and inspire your students to pick up reading.
Hi, my name is Helena Waters and I was a teacher for 40 years before retiring last year.
During my time as a teacher I dedicated the majority of it to making classrooms as fun as possible, with educational parties, fun activities, and low cost entertainment that made the children excited about learning.
I taught children of all ages, from preschoolers to high school students. Now, with the pandemic having uprooted everything that children once knew about school and learning, I think that the need for my ideas is bigger than ever.
That is why I created School Sparks, a place in which I can write down and share all of my ideas on how to get students excited about going to school again. I hope that you’ll find some useful within a school setting, even at home too!
