Children can be quite receptive to quotes, whether they are curious about technology, or you just need an easy and succinct way of explaining a concept to your pupils.
You can skirt around a topic for a long time and just confuse the kids, but with one simple quote you may be able to say it in one sentence.
These quotes about technology can get kids excited about technology, get them excited to study the subject, and can help inspire some ideas in the class.
Beyond making a call to action, some of these quotes can simply help the children conceptualize something a little harder, or just help them understand technology itself, why we use it and what we can do with it.
Keep reading to find out some of our favorite quotes about technology to use in class. Find out your favorite below!
Quotes About Technology
1. “Technology is best when it brings people together.” – Matt Mullenweg, Social Media Entrepreneur
This is great to remind us as well as the pupils that technology is a tool that can be really useful to unite people, rather than divide them.
Look at social media for example, it’s best when it’s used to bring us together, as a tool of communication, rather than a tool to make money or gain popularity.
2. “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” – Albert Einstein, Scientist
Einstein is full of philosophical wisdom related to STEM subjects, and this one is no different.
This reminds us that while technology can be used to cure diseases, to help people communicate across continents, even to make the lives of those suffering easier. However, technology can also be used for evil.
Many of the advantages of technology, when in the wrong hands, can be used against humanity itself. Einstein is perhaps suggesting that technology has moved faster than our understanding of its benefits.
3. “It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are.” – Clive James, Broadcaster And Journalist
Clive James is promoting caution when dealing with technology here, and it’s a good way to remind kids that we need to be responsible and measured when dealing with technology, thinking of the repercussions of the decisions we make now.
Just like a knife it can be a simple everyday domestic tool, only when we cut ourselves do we remember it can be a lethal weapon.
4. “The Web as I envisaged it, we have not seen it yet. The future is still so much bigger than the past.” – Tim Berners-Lee, Inventor Of The World Wide Web
This is a helpful way for kids to conceptualize the future, and time itself, as well as how technology will change in the future. To understand that what feels so ahead of its time today will soon be yesterday’s news.
This is also a good way to help kids realize that there is a past and there will be a future.
Moreover, that people existed before them, and people will exist after them too, and that everyone has a different experience of things as a result, which can promote empathy for elders as well as people younger than them.
5. “If future generations are to remember us more with gratitude than sorrow, we must achieve more than just the miracles of technology. We must also leave them a glimpse of the world as it was created, not just as it looked when we got through with it.” – Lyndon B. Johnson, Former President Of The United States Of America
Again, this reminds us to use technology for good rather than for evil.
It also promotes stewardship, we shouldn’t just make things because we can, for the sake of it, but we should focus on using technology to help those who will exist after us, making the world a better place with technology so others can enjoy it.
7. “Once a new technology rolls over you, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road.” – Stewart Brand, Writer
This reminds us to be adaptive and understand as the present becomes the future we need to keep up with it rather than be resistive to change.
That trying to resist something new will ultimately be our failure rather than trying to crystalize the current reality we experience.
In short, we shouldn’t be scared of newer technologies but understand its part of nature to try to advance alongside it.
8. “The advance of technology is based on making it fit in so that you don’t really even notice it, so it’s part of everyday life.” – Bill Gates, Co-founder Of Microsoft
This is a great quote for practical technological application. It provides a blueprint for how we should engineer technology. It shouldn’t be brash and crude but elegant and sophisticated enough that it blends in and is unnoticeable.
Like how phones are now, we don’t know how we would live without them, excluding all the negative stuff, it demonstrates a well engineered piece of technology as a result.
9. “If you haven’t failed yet, you haven’t tried anything.” – Reshma Saujani, Lawyer, Politician, Founder Of Girls Who Code
This is a great quote for kids, as technology in school can be tough for some. It reminds kids to persevere and that if they fail they are doing something right.
When we make mistakes we are learning and this quote can help kids understand that failure isn’t always a bad thing.
This can be important to understand specifically within the realm of coding where the most unlikely outcome is often the most informative.
10. “We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.” – Mary Catherine Bateson, Writer And Cultural Anthropologist
This can get to the heart of knowledge itself, that our understanding of the world is often infinite but only we can decide where our boundaries are.
It shows that if we chose to not know something we can live a sheltered life and that can change us, but if we want to learn and explore that it’s always possible too.
11.“Science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated.” – Rosalind Franklin, Chemist And X-ray Crystallographer
This reminds us that while science and technology can seem conceptual and often far away from everyday life, that technology and what we create will fundamentally affect our everyday lives more than anything else.
A reminder that the theoretical will always become practical.
12. “Play is the highest form of research.” – Albert Einstein, Theoretical Physicist
This is a great tithing for kids to understand, that they don’t need to always search for definite answer or for a clear outcome, but that simply ‘playing’ whether that is just using equipment, demonstrating a theory, or getting used to how something works, is ultimately the kind of thing that will make us into better scientists and bring us closer to our goals in the long run.
13. “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” – W.B. Yeats, Poet
This is perhaps one for the teachers. THis reminds us that our job isn’t to simply fill kids’ heads with bland knowledge, but our job is to inspire them so that they learn by themselves.
Yeah, you can just tell someone the answer, but if they can come to that answer through their own curiosity, research, and through play, this will inspire them to continue learning without our scaffolding.
14. “All the world is a laboratory to the inquiring mind.” – Martin Henry Fischer, Physician & Author
This is good for kids who maybe aren’t scientific.
This can help kids understand that what they learn through their STEM subjects doesn’t always have to be used in a specific environment, but that science and technology can teach us ways to navigate the worlds and other subjects, and isn’t just closed knowledge.
15. “Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time.” – Chinese Proverb
This is a great quote to remind us that we shouldn’t force our own perception of things onto kids but work with them.
How we learn isn’t always the best way to teach someone else, because they will have a completely different perception of life and the subject.
Final Thoughts
We hope that these quotes have given you some food for thought, whether they inspire you as a teacher, or whether they are quotes you will repeat to your pupils.
These quotes remind us how to use technology, point out paradoxes and fallacies that can help us understand these topics more.
It’s important to recognize that as teachers we are also learning and learn from our pupils as much as they are learning and learn from us.
Many of these quotes get to the heart of more than just science, but how we explore and experience the world as well as how time can affect us and knowledge itself.
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!
