53+ Marva Collins Quotes On Education, Success And Hiring

Marva Collins was an educator and biographer who was widely known for her unconventional teaching methods. She founded the Westside Preparatory School in Chicago to provide an alternative to the public school system. She was a pioneer in the education reform movement and wrote several books about her educational philosophy. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Marva Collins on education, success, leadership.

Top 10 Marva Collins Quotes

1. Trust yourself. Think for yourself. Act for yourself. Speak for yourself. Be yourself. Imitation is suicide.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Excellence is not an act but a habit. The things you do the most are the things you will do best.
5. Determination and perseverance move the world; thinking that others will do it for you is a sure way to fail.
6. 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.
7. If you don't give anything, don't expect anything. Success is not coming to you, you must come to it.
8. There is a brilliant child locked inside every student.
9. Kids don't fail. Teachers fail, school systems fail. The people who teach children that they are failures, they are the problem.
10. The good teacher makes the poor student good and the good student superior.

Marva Collins Short Quotes

• You can pay people to teach, But you can't pay them to care.
• Excellence is not an act, but a habit.
• Death cannot put the brakes on a good dream.
• Praise is essential in developing the right attitude toward learning and toward school.
• Everything works when the teacher works. It's as easy as that, and as hard.
• Character is what you know you are, not what others think you have.
• Once children learn how to learn, nothing is going to narrow their mind.
• Trust yourself. Think for yourself. Act for yourself. Speak for yourself. Be yourself.
• An error means a child needs help, not a reprimand or ridicule for doing something wrong.
• Before I can effectively discipline students, I have to earn their friendship and respect.

Marva Collins Quotes About Education

The purpose of a liberal arts education is to learn that a person can like both cats and dogs. — Marva Collins

Teaching children to read was one thing; keeping them interested in reading was something else. — Marva Collins

Education is the thing. This black-white bit - I don't deal with people that way. I deal with it as if you are another individual. If you do something that perturbs me or aggravates me, I do not think you've done it because I'm black. — Marva Collins

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

One of the things that even wealthy children need is an education, and I think the problems I saw really have nothing to do with economics. So I was unhappy with what my own children were getting even in the better schools, and then I was seeing so many children here recruited for failure. — Marva Collins

That's how I try to think of education - a school is a miniature society where children learn to function in a real world. — Marva Collins

We've been brainwashed into thinking that it takes more monies than it actually does to educate children. That's been one of the brainwash jobs. — Marva Collins

Marva Collins Quotes About Success

Readers are leaders. Thinkers succeed. — Marva Collins

Success doesn't come to you you go to it. — Marva Collins

None of you has ever failed. School may have failed you. Goodbye to failure, children. Welcome to success. — Marva Collins

Marva Collins Quotes About Inspirational

I cannot change the world, but I do not have to conform. — Marva Collins

If you can't make a mistake, you can't make anything. — Marva Collins

When our students fail, we, as teachers, too, have failed. — Marva Collins

Marva Collins Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

If you can't make a mistake, you can't make anything. — Marva Collins

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

You can't find me 20 children in Chicago, I don't care which section you go in - you can be on Michigan Avenue or here - and they won't be able to tell you that y is a vowel when it's the final syllable in a word, as in Nancy and icy. And no one bothers to teach the rules anymore - "i before e except after c." — Marva Collins

[Kid] never learned to read in kindergarten, first, and second, so in third grade he begins to be placed in the EMH or the learning-disabled rooms. — Marva Collins

I don't have to be accountable to some authority, which is why I don't take federal funds. I don't want anyone's monies unless they're monies without strings attached. It's not that we don't need them. — Marva Collins

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

Parents often brag about the amount of money spent per child, but I think, perhaps ironically, those great monies that are spent - I call it putting a band-aid on a hemorrhage. — Marva Collins

I think what we've done is given children a lot of things that they didn't ask for instead of what they do want. — Marva Collins

I was very, very unhappy with even the so-called very elite schools. The one thing I've always done every day with my children is to watch what they do at school, and I was always a bit unhappy with the academic program. It was a kind of hit and miss. — Marva Collins

Our children learn the phonetic method, which is why they're very good spellers, I suppose. Because rather than ABC or just saying a word, they'll have to go a as in apple and all the other a's there are in the English language. They learn that when they're four. Children all over America can tell you that a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y are vowels. But you ask them about that "sometimes y," and they can't tell you. — Marva Collins

There is a lot of money to be made from miseducation, from the easy to read easy to learn textbooks, workbooks, teacher manuals, educational games and visual aids. The textbook business is more than a billion-dollar-a-year industry and some of its biggest profits come from 'audio-visual aids' - flash cards, tape cassettes, and filmstrips. No wonder the education industry encourages schools to focus on surface education. — Marva Collins

I got so tired of hearing those proverbs when I was a child. Now I use them all the time. Sometimes they are the best way to say what needs to be said. I teach them to my students. I have a collection of proverbs for class discussion and writing assignments. — Marva Collins

A person cannot all of a sudden become good at what they do just by switching streams. — Marva Collins

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

I'm not one of those who say this is the way. I'm not that opinionated. I can only say this is my way. Even the $1,000 scholarship that my son could have gotten from the state of Illinois to go to college, we didn't want. I'd rather get out and work and have my children know that their money comes from their parents and we have to work for it. — Marva Collins

There isn't a certain time we should set aside to talk about God. God is part of our every waking moment — Marva Collins

People have to live by rules in the world. Why do we pretend in school that they don't? — Marva Collins

I believe the more difficult a child is, the more I want that child. But I won't take a child until the parent brings him to us. So it is just the opposite - we get the ones that no one else will take. We get sawdust, and we have to make boards out of it. — Marva Collins

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

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

Life Lessons by Marva Collins

1. Marva Collins teaches that with hard work and dedication, it is possible to achieve great success. She emphasizes that education is the key to success and that we should never give up on our dreams.
2. She also encourages us to be compassionate and to never underestimate the power of kindness, even when faced with difficult circumstances.
3. Finally, Marva Collins teaches us to be resilient and to never give up on ourselves, no matter how hard life may seem.