If you’re looking for the best collection of Marva Collins quotes then look no further.
Marva Collins was an American educator best known for creating Westside Preparatory School, a private elementary school in the impoverished Garfield Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois which opened in 1975.
Dismayed at the low levels of learning that she felt some students were experiencing in particular areas, Collins took $5,000 (a large sum of money at that time) from her own teacher’s retirement fund to create Westside Preparatory School.
Westside Preparatory School became an educational and commercial success due to Collins’s dedication. She took greater responsibility for the success of her students and gave them the much-needed confidence and self-esteem to achieve academically.
What’s inspiring about Marva Collins is that she saw a problem and took responsibility for fixing it. While her success gave her opportunities to become Secretary of Education she opted for helping one student at a time.
Below are the best Marva Collins quotes on teaching and success. Hope you enjoy them.
Inspirational Marva Collins Quotes
1. “Trust yourself. Think for yourself. Act for yourself. Speak for yourself. Be yourself. Imitation is suicide.” – Marva Collins
2. “Once children learn how to learn, nothing is going to narrow their mind. The essence of teaching is to make learning contagious, to have one idea spark another.” – Marva Collins
3. “Excellence is not an act but a habit. The things you do the most are the things you will do best.” – Marva Collins
4. “Success doesn’t come to you, you go to it.” – Marva Collins
5. “When someone is taught the joy of learning, it becomes a life-long process that never stops, a process that creates a logical individual. That is the challenge and joy of teaching.” – Marva Collins
6. “Students do not need to be labeled or measured any more than they are. They don’t need more Federal funds, grants, and gimmicks. What they need from us is common sense, dedication, and bright, energetic teachers who believe that all children are achievers and who take personally the failure of any one child.” – Marva Collins
7. “Don’t try to fix the students, fix ourselves first. The good teacher makes the poor student good and the good student superior. When our students fail, we, as teachers, too, have failed.” – Marva Collins
8. “Mr. Meant-to has a friend, his name is Didn’t-Do. Have you met them? They live together in a house called Never-Win. And I am told that it is haunted by the Ghost of Might-have-Been.” – Marva Collins
9. “I’m a teacher. A teacher is someone who leads. There is no magic here. I do not walk on water. I do not part the sea. I just love children.” – Marva Collins
10. “Determination and perseverance move the world; thinking that others will do it for you is a sure way to fail.” – Marva Collins
11. “There is a brilliant child locked inside every student.” – Marva Collins
12. “If you don’t give anything, don’t expect anything. Success is not coming to you, you must come to it.” – Marva Collins
13. “What all good teachers have in common, however, is that they set high standards for their students and do not settle for anything less.” – Marva Collins
14. “Character is what you know you are, not what others think you have.” – Marva Collins
15. “Kids don’t fail. Teachers fail, school systems fail. The people who teach children that they are failures, they are the problem.” – Marva Collins
16. “If you can’t make a mistake, you can’t make anything.” – Marva Collins
17. “An error means a child needs help, not a reprimand or ridicule for doing something wrong.” – Marva Collins
18. “Before I can effectively discipline students, I have to earn their friendship and respect.” – Marva Collins
19. “I cannot change the world, but I do not have to conform.” – Marva Collins
20. “I have discovered few learning disabled students in my three decades of teaching. I have, however, discovered many, many victims of teaching inabilities.” – Marva Collins
21. “You can pay people to teach, But you can’t pay them to care.” – Marva Collins
22. “Until kids decide, ‘I am a miracle. I am unique. There is no one else exactly like me,’ they can never draw the conclusion, ‘Because I’m a miracle, I will never harm another person who’s a miracle like me.’ In this slippery world, they all need something to hang on to.” – Marva Collins
23. “The more monies we spend, the less children learn; because the more machines we have there, the more gadgets, the more gimmicks, the less children have to really think – the less they have to use their innate abilities, their curiosity, their brains.” – Marva Collins
24. “Readers are leaders. Thinkers succeed.” – Marva Collins
25. “Death cannot put the brakes on a good dream.” – Marva Collins
26. “One night my son was downstairs studying, and he had been up so late all that week, and my husband said, “I feel so sorry for him.” I said, “Look, if he’s going to become a surgeon” – he is studying to be a doctor – “he’s going to have his hard times. I feel sorry for him too, but if he lives in this world he’s going to have more hard times. He’s going to stay up some more nights.” I think we can’t shield them from the hard times, even though we’d like to. I say to the children that I teach and to my own – I can’t test the ground for you and tell you that’s a safe step there.” – Marva Collins
27. “Peace will always rule the day where reason rules the mind.” – Marva Collins
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