No matter how talented you are, or how much experience you have, having a mentor can help take you to the next level.
Mentors offer guidance and support, and can provide valuable insights that you may not have access to on your own. As an entrepreneur, creator, or linchpin, it’s important to find a mentor who can help you grow both professionally and personally.
In this collection of mentor quotes, we’ve curated some inspiring words from famous thinkers and entrepreneurs about the importance of mentorship. Read on to learn more!
Mentor Quotes
The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not and never persist in trying to set people right.
Hannah Whitall Smith
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
I cannot teach anybody anything; I can only make them think.
Socrates
Colleagues are a wonderful thing – but mentors, that’s where the real work gets done.
Junot Diaz
The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.
Mark Van Doren
By thinking about your goals every morning, many times during the day, and every night, you begin moving toward it, and bringing it toward you.
Bob Proctor
One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
Carl Jung
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Maya Angelou
The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves.
Steven Spielberg
In a battery, I strive to maximize electrical potential. When mentoring, I strive to maximize human potential.
Donald Sadoway
Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
We can help a person to be himself by our own willingness to steep ourselves temporarily in his world, in his private feelings and experiences. By our affirmation of the person as he is, we give him support and strength to take the next step in his own growth.
Clark Moustakas
I remember saying to my mentor, ‘If I had more money, I would have a better plan.’ He quickly responded, ‘I would suggest that if you had a better plan, you would have more money.’ You see, it’s not the amount that counts; it’s the plan that counts.
Jim Rohn
The knowledge we get by tinkering, via trial and error, experience, and the workings of time, in other words, contact with the earth, is vastly superior to that obtained through reasoning, something self-serving institutions have been very busy hiding from us.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
However self-sufficient we may fancy ourselves, we exist only in relation – to our friend, family, and life partners; to those we teach and mentor; to our coworkers, neighbors, strangers; and even to forces we cannot fully conceive of, let alone define. In many ways, we are our relationships.
Derrick Bell
What is desired is that the teacher ceased being a lecturer, satisfied with transmitting ready-made solutions. His role should rather be that of a mentor stimulating initiative and research.
Jean Piaget
I’ve been lucky to have lots and lots of mentors. I think that is incredibly important in anyone’s life to encourage and inspire them, let them understand that their own potential is a reality that they can strive for.
Erik Weihenmayer
If a man is to shed the light of the sun upon other men, he must first of all have it within himself.
Romain Rolland
Hug and kiss whoever helped get you – financially, mentally, morally, emotionally – to this day. Parents, mentors, friends, teachers. If you’re too uptight to do that, at least do the old handshake thing, but I recommend a hug and a kiss. Don’t let the sun go down without saying thank you to someone, and without admitting to yourself that absolutely no one gets this far alone.
Stephen King
Tell me and i forget. Teach me and i remember. Involve me and i learn.
Benjamin Franklin
Every student deserves to be treated as a potential genius.
Anton Ehrenzweig
A mentor is someone who sees more talent and ability within you, than you see in yourself, and helps bring it out of you.
Bob Proctor
Conscience, as a mentor, the guide and compass of every act, leads ever to happiness. When the individual can stay alone with his or her conscience and get its approval, without knowing force or specious knowledge, then he or she begins to know what real happiness is.
William George Jordan
The difference in a teacher and a mentor is that a mentor is interested in our soul.
Robert A. Johnson
Every child I know who overcame long odds and grew into a responsible adult can point to an adult who stepped into his or her life as a FRIEND, a MENTOR, and a GUIDE.
Truett Cathy
Most people who decide to grow personally find their first mentors in the pages of books.
John C. Maxwell
A Role Model should be like the light at the end of a tunnel, guiding you when you are lost.
Cristina Imre
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Maya Angelou
It’s easy to make a buck. It’s a lot tougher to make a difference.
Tom Brokaw
Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The best gift you can ever give your mentor is to grow. They feed off your growth. I believe that everyone has the seed of success inside, but too many people can’t find it in themselves and as a result do not reach their potential. But there are those whose purpose in life is to fertilize the seed of potential in another, who are rewarded by seeing that person grow and blossom before their eyes. Raising up others to a higher level is a mentor’s joy and sustenance.
John C. Maxwell
Spoon feeding, in the long run, teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
E.M.Forster
Learning is finding out that you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, and teachers.
Richard Bach
My mentor said, ‘Let’s go do it’, not ‘You go do it’. How powerful when someone says, ‘Let’s!’
Jim Rohn
It’s been true in my life that when I’ve needed a mentor, the right person shows up.
Ken Blanchard
My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better.
Steve Jobs
Think for yourself. Unplug yourself from follow-the-follower groupthink, and virtually ignore what everyone else in your industry is saying (except the ones everyone agrees is crazy). Do your own research, draw your own conclusions, set your own course, and stick to your guns. When you’re just starting out, people will tell you you’re wrong. After you’ve blown past them, they’ll tell you you’re crazy. A few years after that, they’ll (privately) ask you to mentor them.
Steve Pavlina
If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.
Rachel Carson
The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.
Plutarch
In terms of changes, the spiritual mentors teach me that I must not forget those relating primarily to improve myself.
Chico Xavier
I think the greatest thing we give each other is encouragement…knowing that I’m talking to someone in this mentoring relationship who’s interested in the big idea here is very, very important to me. I think if it were just about helping me get to the next step, it would be a heck of a lot less interesting.
Anne Sweeney
You cannot teach a man anything. You can only help him discover it within himself.
Galileo Galilei
Cooking is in an honest profession where you cannot hide and let others do the work for you. You have to show up, work hard and prove you can do it faster and better. And find a mentor who will recognize your talent and push you in the right direction.
Marcus Samuelsson
What you do has far greater impact than what you say.
Stephen Covey
What i need is someone who will make me do what i can.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every disciple needs three types of relationships in his life. He needs a ‘Paul’ who can mentor him and challenge him. He needs a ‘Barnabas’ who can come along side and encourage him. And he needs a ‘Timothy,’ someone that he can pour his life into.
Howard G. Hendricks
If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
Isaac Newton
Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.
Jacques Barzun
I think along the way, as we treat nature as model and mentor, and not as a nuisance to be evaded or manipulated, we will certainly acquire much more reverence for life than we seem to be showing right now.
Amory Lovins
Mentoring is a brain to pick, an ear to listen, and a push in the right direction.
John Crosby
I am not a teacher, but an awakener.
Robert Frost
People will never forget how you made them feel.
Maya Angelou
Don’t wait for mentors to seek you out. Don’t ever wait for your phone calls to be returned, your letters to be answered, your faxes to be responded to. Keep going out and asking question.
Denis Waitley
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
Mentoring brings us together – across generation, class, and often race – in a manner that forces us to acknowledge our interdependence, to appreciate, in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words, that ‘we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny.’
Marc Freedman
Good coaching is good teaching and nothing else.
Pat Conroy
You can’t push anyone up the ladder unless he is willing to climb himself.
Andrew Carnegie
A great mentor helps you to achieve what seems impossible.
Mariela Dabbah
The people closest to me determine my level of success or failure. The better they are, the better I am. And if I want to go to the highest level, I can do it only with the help of other people. We have to take each other higher.
John C. Maxwell
The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.
William A. Ward
A mentor is a person, an expert in a specific area of endeavor, who trains, guides and observes a less experienced person to also become an expert through support, advice, and involvement in character-building opportunities.
Israelmore Ayivor
The path to diversity begins with supporting, mentoring, and sponsoring diverse women and men to become leaders and entrepreneurs.
Denise Morrison
Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.
Margaret Mead
If you’re early on in your career and they give you a choice between a great mentor or higher pay, take the mentor every time. It’s not even close. And don’t even think about leaving that mentor until your learning curve peaks.
Stanley Druckenmiller
Age is rarely a limitation to being a mentor.
Ken Blanchard
The best way a mentor can prepare another leader is to expose him or her to other great people.
John C. Maxwell
Mentoring is the cultivation of young adults, the tender caring for and nurturing of them so that they will grow, flourish, and be fruitful.
Jeff Myers
How you coach them is how they’re going to play.
Stefan Fatsis
If you ask most smart or successful people where they learned their craft, they will not talk to you about their time in school. It’s always a mentor, a particularly transformative job, or a period of experimentation or trial and error.
Ryan Holiday
I think the most important quality of a mentor is that they are open to following students where they want to go. Not always pushing their own agenda.
Cordelia Jensen
If the world had more people like you it would be a better place. You do make a difference.
Catherine Pulsifer
True mentors don’t make their mentees a clone of themselves.
Bernard Kelvin Clive
You are only as powerful as your mentors.
Robert G. Allen
It’s important to look for mentors all around you.
Maureen Chiquet
If you ask any successful business person, they will always have had a great mentor at some point along the road.
Richard Branson
Teaching is a creative profession, not a delivery system. Great teachers do [pass on information], but what great teachers also do is mentor, stimulate, provoke, engage.
Ken Robinson
Your Mentors in life are important, so choose them wisely.
Robert Kiyosaki
Parting Words
Appreciating the impact of mentors in our lives is one step, but actually finding and working with a mentor can be daunting. The quotes we’ve shared today should help you reflect on the importance of mentors and provide some inspiration to find someone who can help guide your development.
Finding a mentor can be one of the best decisions you make in your career. Not only do they offer guidance and support, but they also provide a wealth of knowledge and experience that can help skyrocket your development. The next time you find yourself feeling lost or stuck, reach out to a potential mentor—you won’t regret it.
What’s your favorite quote about mentors? Leave us a comment below. e would love to hear from you!
P.S. You might also like these related quote collections:
- Quotes About Influence
- Quotes About Reflection
- Quotes About Finding Yourself
- Quotes About Self Actualization
- Quotes About Moments
Originally Published: November 21, 2022
✍️ Cusco, Peru
