How much more precious is a little humanity than all the rules in the world.
Punishment renders autonomy of conscience impossible.
If mutual respect does derive from unilateral respect, it does so by opposition.
The self thus becomes aware of itself, at least in its practical action, and discovers itself as a cause among other causes and as an object subject to the same laws as other objects.
Reflective abstraction, however, is based not on individual actions but on coordinated actions.
Our problem, from the point of view of psychology and from the point of view of genetic epistemology, is to explain how the transition is made from a lower level of knowledge to a level that is judged to be higher.
Equilibrium is the profoundest tendency of all human activity.
Knowing reality means constructing systems of transformations that correspond, more or less adequately, to reality.
The child is a realist in every domain of thought, and it is therefore natural that in the moral sphere he should lay more stress on the external, tangible element than on the hidden motive.
The essential functions of the mind consist in understanding and in inventing, in other words, in building up structures by structuring reality.
As you know, Bergson pointed out that there is no such thing as disorder but rather two sorts of order, geometric and living.
The most developed science remains a continual becoming.
I have always detested any departure from reality, an attitude which I relate to my mother’s poor mental health.
Scientific knowledge is in perpetual evolution; it finds itself changed from one day to the next.
In other words, knowledge of the external world begins with an immediate utilisation of things, whereas knowledge of self is stopped by this purely practical and utilitarian contact.
I could not think without writing.
If logic itself is created rather than being inborn, it follows that the first task of education is to form reasoning.
What the genetic epistemology proposes is discovering the roots of the different varieties of knowledge, since its elementary forms, following to the next levels, including also the scientific knowledge.
In genetic epistemology, as in developmental psychology, too, there is never an absolute beginning.
The current state of knowledge is a moment in history, changing just as rapidly as the state of knowledge in the past has ever changed and, in many instances, more rapidly.