Quotes by Anne Sullivan

About Anne Sullivan:

Johanna was an American teacher, best known for being the instructor and lifelong companion of Helen Keller. She contracted trachoma, a highly infectious eye infection, when she was eight years old which left her blind and without reading or writing skills. She received her education as a student of the Perkins School for the Blind where upon graduation she became a teacher to Keller.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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!

Anne Sullivan

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

Anne Sullivan

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.

Anne Sullivan

We are afraid of ideas, of experimenting, of change. We shrink from thinking a problem through to a logical conclusion.

Anne Sullivan

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

Anne Sullivan

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

Anne Sullivan

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.

Anne Sullivan

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.

Anne Sullivan

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.

Anne Sullivan

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.

Anne Sullivan

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.

Anne Sullivan

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.

Anne Sullivan

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

Anne Sullivan

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.

Anne Sullivan

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

Anne Sullivan

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

Anne Sullivan

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.

Anne Sullivan

The truth is not wonderful enough to suit the newspapers; so they enlarge upon it, and invent ridiculous embellishments.

Anne Sullivan

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.

Anne Sullivan

People seldom see the halting and painful steps by which the most insignificant success is achieved.

Anne Sullivan

Author Bio

  • NameAnne Sullivan
  • DescriptionTeacher and companion of Helen Keller
  • AliasesAnne Sullivan Macy
  • BornApril 14, 1866
  • DiedOctober 20, 1936
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionTeacher
  • AwardsNational Women's Hall Of Fame