Top 12 Quotes & Sayings by Anne Sullivan Macy

Too often, I think, children are required to write before they have anything to say. Teach them to think and read and talk without self-repression, and they will write because they cannot help it.

I never taught language for the purpose of teaching it; but invariably used language as a medium for the communication of thought; thus the learning of language was coincident with the acquisition of knowledge.

Why, it is as easy to teach the name of an idea, if it is clearly formulated in the child's mind, as to teach the name of an object.

You cannot touch the clouds, you know; but you feel the rain and know how glad the flowers and the thirsty earth are to have it after a hot day. You cannot touch love either; but you feel the sweetness that it pours into everything. Without love you would not be happy or want to play.

Obedience is the gateway through which knowledge, yes, and love, too, enter the mind of the child.

Is it not true, then, that my life with all its limitation touches at many points the life of the World Beautiful? Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be, therein to be content.

We all make mistakes, as the hedgehog said as he climbed off the scrubbing brush

You can't touch love, but you can feel the sweetness that it pours into everything.

I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better , if less "showily." Let him come and go freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself... Teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experiences.

If my parents didn't push me and didn't support education, I probably wouldn't be here today.... Regardless of whatever they went through and how they may have been treated, they felt education was important. So, it's easier when you have the parents who support it, rather than those who don't.

Language grows out of life, out of its needs and experiences...Language and knowledge are indissolubly connected; they are interdependent. Good work in language presupposes and depends on a real knowledge of things.

Language grows out of life, out of its needs and experiences. 828