Top 35 Anne Sullivan Macy Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “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.”

— Anne Sullivan Macy

2. “Every renaissance comes to the world with a cry, the cry of the human spirit to be free.”

— Anne Sullivan Macy

3. “You can’t touch love, but you can feel the sweetness that it pours into everything.”

— Anne Sullivan Macy

4. “Yes, I am proud, and very humble too.”

— Anne Sullivan Macy

5. “The processes of teaching the child that everything cannot be as he wills it are apt to be painful both to him and to his teacher.”

— Anne Sullivan Macy

6. “We all make mistakes, as the hedgehog said as he climbed off the scrubbing brush.”

— Anne Sullivan Macy

7. “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.”

— Anne Sullivan Macy

8. “My heart is singing for joy this morning! A miracle has happened! The light of understanding has shone upon my little pupil’s mind, and behold, all things are changed!”

— Anne Sullivan Macy

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

— Anne Sullivan Macy

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

— Anne Sullivan Macy

11. “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.”

— Anne Sullivan Macy

12. “Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction.”

— Anne Sullivan Macy

13. “A strenuous effort must be made to train young people to think for themselves and take independent charge of their lives.”

— Anne Sullivan Macy

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

— Anne Sullivan Macy

15. “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 Macy

16. “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 Macy

17. “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 Macy

18. “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 Macy

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

— Anne Sullivan Macy

20. “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 Macy

21. “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.”

— Anne Sullivan Macy

22. “If the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less showily. Let him go and come freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself.”

— Anne Sullivan Macy

23. “Cheer up, the worst is yet to come.”

— Anne Sullivan Macy

24. “I cannot explain it; but when difficulties arise, I am not perplexed or doubtful. I know how to meet them.”

— Anne Sullivan Macy

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

— Anne Sullivan Macy

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

— Anne Sullivan Macy

27. “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 Macy

28. “Our material eye cannot see that a stupid chauvinism is driving us from one noisy, destructive, futile agitation to another.”

— Anne Sullivan Macy

29. “It is a rare privilege to watch the birth, growth, and first feeble struggles of a living mind; this privilege is mine.”

— Anne Sullivan Macy

30. “I’d rather break stones on the king’s highway than hem a handkerchief.”

— Anne Sullivan Macy

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

— Anne Sullivan Macy

32. “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 Macy

33. “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.”

— Anne Sullivan Macy

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

— Anne Sullivan Macy

35. “The wrong things are predominantly stressed in the schools – things remote from the student’s experience and need.”

— Anne Sullivan Macy

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

— Anne Sullivan Macy

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

— Anne Sullivan Macy