Children are human beings to whom respect is due, superior to us by reason of their innocence and of the greater possibilities of their future.
The child is both a hope and a promise for mankind.
Play is the work of the child.
Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.
To teach details is to bring confusion; to establish the relationship between things is to bring knowledge.
The first essential for the child’s development is concentration. The child who concentrates is immensely happy.
A child needs freedom within limits.
Within the child lies the fate of the future.
When dealing with children there is greater need for observing than of probing.
The exercises of practical life are formative activities, a work of adaptation to the environment. Such adaptation to the environment and efficient functioning therein is the very essence of a useful education.
The child seeks for independence by means of work; an independence of body and mind.
Culture and education have no bounds or limits; now man is in a phase in which he must decide for himself how far he can proceed in the culture that belongs to the whole of humanity.
First the education of the senses, then the education of the intellect.
There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.
Intelligence is the capacity to perceive the essential, the what is; and to awaken this capacity, in oneself and in others, is education.
Education in the true sense is helping the individual to be mature and free, to flower greatly in love and goodness. That is what we should be interested in, and not in shaping the child according to some idealistic pattern.
To understand life is to understand ourselves, and that is both the beginning and the end of education.
Teachers are the most important individuals in our society – nothing is as powerful as the human touch in education.
To teach is to learn twice.
Literacy is, finally, the road to human progress and the means through which every man, woman and child can realize his or her full potential.