Conventions which camouflage a man’s true feelings are a spiritual lie which help him adapt himself to the organized deviations of society...
We must clearly understand that when we give the child freedom and independence, we are giving freedom to a worker already braced for action, who cannot live without working and being active.
The hand is the prehensile organ of the mind.
The adult ought never to mold the child after himself, but should leave him alone and work always from the deepest comprehension of the child himself.
Bring the child to the consciousness of his own dignity and he will feel free.
Knowing what we must do is neither fundamental nor difficult, but to comprehend which presumptions and vain prejudices we must rid ourselves of in order to be able to educate our children is most difficult.
With younger children the greatest reward is to be able to pass on to a new stage in each subject. It is a punishment to a young child not to be allowed to use the apparatus but to sit still and do nothing.
The prize and punishments are incentives toward unnatural or forced effort, and, therefore we certainly cannot speak of the natural development of the child in connection with them.
The child builds his inmost self out of the deeply held impressions he receives.
No adult can bear a child’s burden or grow up in his stead.
Our goal is not so much the imparting of knowledge as the unveiling and developing of spiritual energy.
The ‘absorbent mind’ welcomes everything, puts its hope in everything, accepts poverty equally with wealth, adopts any religion and the prejudices and habits of its countrymen, incarnating all in itself. This is the child!
Since it is through movement that the will realises itself, we should assist a child in his attempts to put his will into act.
The real preparation for education is the study of one’s self.
First the education of the senses, then the education of the intellect.
To give a child liberty is not to abandon him to himself.
We must, therefore, quit our roles as jailers and instead take care to prepare an environment in which we do as little as possible to exhaust the child with our surveillance and instruction.
There can be no substitute for work, neither affection nor physical well-being can replace it.
If a child finds no stimuli for the activities which would contribute to his development, he is attracted simply to ‘things’ and desires to posses them.
It is easy to substitute our will for that of the child by means of suggestion or coercion; but when we have done this we have robbed him of his greatest right, the right to construct his own personality.