Our care of the child should be governed, not by the desire to make him learn things, but by the endeavor always to keep burning within him that light which is called intelligence.
Of all things love is the most potent.
It is not enough for the teacher to love the child. She must first love and understand the universe. She must prepare herself, and truly work at it.
Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.
There is in every child a painstaking teacher so skillful that he obtains identical results in all children in all parts of the world. The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one teaches them anything.
Only through freedom and environmental experience is it practically possible for human development to occur.
The child’s progress does not depend only on his age, but also on being free to look around him.
The essential thing is to arouse such an interest that it engages the child’s whole personality.
No social problem is as universal as the oppression of the child.
The ancient saying, “There is nothing in the intellect which was not first in some way in the senses,” and senses being explorers of the world, opens the way to knowledge.
But if for the physical life it is necessary to have the child exposed to the vivifying forces of nature, it is also necessary for his psychical life to place the soul of the child in contact with creation.
The child will reveal himself through work.
What the hand does the mind remembers.
We are the sowers – our children are those who reap. We labor so that future generations will be better and nobler than we are.
The human hand allows the mind to reveal itself.
The hands are the instruments of man’s intelligence.
A child is a discoverer. He is an amorphous, splendid being in search of his own proper form.
Little children, from the moment they are weaned, are making their way toward independence.
Beauty lies in harmony, not in contrast; and harmony is refinement; therefore, there must be a fineness of the senses if we are to appreciate harmony.
The teacher must derive not only the capacity, but the desire, to observe natural phenomena. The teacher must understand and feel her position of observer: the activity must lie in the phenomenon.