60+ Best Marva Collins Quotes: Exclusive Selection

Marva Delores Collins was an American educator who broke with a public school system. Collins found to be failing inner-city children and established her own rigorous system and practice to cultivate her students’ independence and accomplishment. Inspirational Marva Collins quotes will encourage growth in life, make you wiser and broaden your perspective.

If you’re searching for inspiring quotes that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of famous Dorothea Dix quotes, deep Booker T. Washington quotes, and meaningful teacher quotes.

Famous Marva Collins Quotes

Determination and perseverance move the world; thinking that others will do it for you is a sure way to fail. – Marva Collins

Trust yourself. Think for yourself. Act for yourself. Speak for yourself. Be yourself. Imitation is suicide. – 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

Everything works when the teacher works. It’s as easy as that, and as hard. – Marva Collins

Excellence is not an act but a habit. The things you do the most are the things you will do best. – Marva Collins

If you can’t make a mistake, you can’t make anything. – Marva Collins

Readers are leaders. Thinkers succeed. – Marva Collins

Character is what you know you are, not what others think you have. – 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

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

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

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

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

People have to live by rules in the world. Why do we pretend in school that they don’t? – 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

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

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

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

Praise is essential in developing the right attitude toward learning and toward school. – Marva Collins

Death cannot put the brakes on a good dream. – 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When I look at the world, I’m pessimistic, but when I look at people, I am optimistic. – Marva Collins

Success doesn’t come to you, you go to it. – Marva Collins

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

Inspirational Marva Collins Quotes

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

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

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

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

There is a brilliant child locked inside every student. – Marva Collins

I will be the first to admit that I am a pessimist by nature. It is, after all, the wisest way to be. We pessimists have everything to gain, whereas optimists have a fifty-fifty chance of being disappointed. – Tamar Myers

If you don’t give anything, don’t expect anything. Success is not coming to you, you must come to it. – 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

If you have negativity in the mind, don’t expect positivity in the life. – Marva Collins

I try not to be too optimistic or pessimistic. If you’re a pessimist then that’s depressing all the time; if you’re an optimist and things don’t work out then that’s depressing, too. – Marva Collins

Kids don’t fail. Teachers fail, school systems fail. The people who teach children that they are failures, they are the problem. – Marva Collins

I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist. – Marva Collins

An error means a child needs help, not a reprimand or ridicule for doing something wrong. – Marva Collins

The good teacher makes the poor student good and the good student superior. – Marva Collins

Before I can effectively discipline students, I have to earn their friendship and respect. – Marva Collins

If you look at life one way, there is always cause for alarm. – Marva Collins

We can complain because rose bushes have thorns or rejoice because thorns have roses. – Marva Collins

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

There are some harsh realities about this business, and they’ve been beaten into my psyche. But I’m more of an optimist than a pessimist. – Marva Collins

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails. – 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

If you expect the worst, you’ll never be disappointed. – Marva Collins

You can pay people to teach, but you can’t pay them to care. – 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

The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true. – Marva Collins

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

A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself and hates them for it. – Marva Collins

The essence of teaching is to make learning contagious, to have one idea spark another. – Marva Collins