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Refugee schoolchildren react to the camera as they attend a lesson in a classroom on the first day of the new school year at one of the UNRWA schools at a Palestinian refugee camp al Wehdat, in Amman, Jordan, Sept. 1, 2016. Reuters

With freshly sharpened pencils and new backpacks handing from their youthful shoulders, students across the United States returned to school Tuesday. Others have already marked the start of the new academic calendar, while some will head back to class later in September.

In Chicago, students returned to class Tuesday, with principals greeting returning and new students at the door of schools. In northern Michigan, children waited Tuesday for a school bus for the first time in months after summer vacation. Meanwhile, in New York City, mothers, fathers and grandparents were preparing for Thursday's first day of the academic year. The New York City Department of Education serves about 1.1 million students in over 1,800 schools.

To celebrate the start of another year of learning, below are some inspirational and funny quotes about education for teachers, families and children.

1. "The morning of the first of September was crisp and golden as an apple." - JK Rowling

2. "[That] old September feeling . . . of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and football in the air . . . Another fall, another turned page: there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year’s mistakes and failures had been wiped clean by summer." - Wallace Stegner

3. "We say that we're in love / While secretly wishing for rain / Sipping coke and playing games / September's here again." - David Sylvian

4. "What one does is what counts and not what one had the intention of doing." - Pablo Picasso

5. "Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it." -Albert Einstein

6. "Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can be taught." - Oscar Wilde

7. "Just don’t take any class where you have to readBEOWULF." - Woody Allen

8. "Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." -Nelson Mandela

9. "The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet." - Aristotle

10. "I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think." - Socrates

11. "Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please." - Mark Twain

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