Anne Sullivan Quotes

The Great War proved how confused the world is. Depression is proving it again.

Every renaissance comes to the world with a cry, the cry of the human spirit to be free.

It's a great mistake, I think, to put children off with falsehoods and nonsense, when their growing powers of observation and discrimination excite in them a desire to know about things.

Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction.

I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think.

My heart is singing for joy this morning! A miracle has happened! The light of understanding has shone upon my little pupil's mind, and behold, all things are changed!

The wrong things are predominantly stressed in the schools - things remote from the student's experience and need.

Our material eye cannot see that a stupid chauvinism is driving us from one noisy, destructive, futile agitation to another.

Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over again, and you will grow stronger until you have accomplished a purpose - not the one you began with perhaps, but one you'll be glad to remember.

No matter how mistaken Communist ideas may be, the experience and knowledge gained by trying them out have given a tremendous impetus to thought and imagination.

Education in the light of present-day knowledge and need calls for some spirited and creative innovations both in the substance and the purpose of current pedagogy.

Yes, I am proud, and very humble too.

I have thought about it a great deal, and the more I think, the more certain I am that obedience is the gateway through which knowledge, yes, and love, too, enter the mind of the child.

We imagine that we want to escape our selfish and commonplace existence, but we cling desperately to our chains.

If the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less showily. Let him go and come freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself.

Certain periods in history suddenly lift humanity to an observation point where a clear light falls upon a world previously dark.

We all like stories that make us cry. It's so nice to feel sad when you've nothing in particular to feel sad about.

The processes of teaching the child that everything cannot be as he wills it are apt to be painful both to him and to his teacher.

We are bothered a good deal by people who assume the responsibility of the world when God is neglectful.

We have no firm hold on any knowledge or philosophy that can lift us out of our difficulties.

I'd rather break stones on the king's highway than hem a handkerchief.

I think that there are some teachers that do a very good job of incorporating culture and history. And there are some teachers who could use a little more help in that area.

I cannot explain it; but when difficulties arise, I am not perplexed or doubtful. I know how to meet them.