Quotes from Anne Sullivan

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.

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

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.

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

Yes, I am proud, and very humble too.

A strenuous effort must be made to train young people to think for themselves and take independent charge of their lives.

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.

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

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

It's queer how ready people always are with advice in any real or imaginary emergency, and no matter how many times experience has shown them to be wrong, they continue to set forth their opinions, as if they had received them from the Almighty!

I need a teacher quite as much as Helen. I know the education of this child will be the distinguishing event of my life, if I have the brains and perseverance to accomplish it.

The immediate future is going to be tragic for all of us unless we find a way of making the vast educational resources of this country serve the true purpose of education, truth and justice.