Top 30 Marva Collins Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Success doesn’t come to you, you go to it.”

— Marva Collins

Featured in: Opportunity Quotes, Effort Quotes, Empowerment Quotes, Ambition Quotes, Progress Quotes

2. “Readers are leaders. Thinkers succeed.”

— Marva Collins

Featured in: Encouraging Quotes for Students, Lifelong Learning Quotes, Inspirational Quotes for Students, Teaching Quotes

3. “If you can’t make a mistake, you can’t make anything.”

— Marva Collins

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

— Marva Collins

5. “The good teacher makes the poor student good and the good student superior.”

— Marva Collins

6. “There is a brilliant child locked inside every student.”

— Marva Collins

7. “Excellence is not an act but a habit. The things you do the most are the things you will do best.”

— Marva Collins

8. “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

9. “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

10. “Kids don’t fail. Teachers fail, school systems fail. The people who teach children that they are failures, they are the problem.”

— Marva Collins

11. “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

12. “Determination and perseverance move the world; thinking that others will do it for you is a sure way to fail.”

— Marva Collins

13. “Teaching children to read was one thing; keeping them interested in reading was something else.”

— Marva Collins

14. “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

15. “When our students fail, we, as teachers, too, have failed.”

— Marva Collins

16. “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

17. “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

18. “Trust yourself. Think for yourself. Act for yourself. Speak for yourself. Be yourself. Imitation is suicide.”

— Marva Collins

19. “The purpose of a liberal arts education is to learn that a person can like both cats and dogs.”

— Marva Collins

20. “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

21. “Excellence is not an act, but a habit.”

— Marva Collins

22. “You can pay people to teach, But you can’t pay them to care.”

— Marva Collins

23. “Character is what you know you are, not what others think you have.”

— Marva Collins

24. “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

25. “An error means a child needs help, not a reprimand or ridicule for doing something wrong.”

— Marva Collins

26. “Everything works when the teacher works. It’s as easy as that, and as hard.”

— Marva Collins

27. “I cannot change the world, but I do not have to conform.”

— Marva Collins

28. “Before I can effectively discipline students, I have to earn their friendship and respect.”

— Marva Collins

29. “None of you has ever failed. School may have failed you. Goodbye to failure, children. Welcome to success.”

— Marva Collins

30. “Praise is essential in developing the right attitude toward learning and toward school.”

— Marva Collins

31. “There isn’t a certain time we should set aside to talk about God. God is part of our every waking moment.”

— Marva Collins

32. “Death cannot put the brakes on a good dream.”

— Marva Collins

33. “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