Quote collection
321 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Rewards and punishments, to speak frankly, are the desk of the soul, that is, a means of enslaving a child's spirit, and better suited to provoke than to prevent deformities."
"If we can, when we have established individual discipline, arrange the children, sending each one to his own place, in order, trying to make them understand the idea that thus placed they look well, and that it is a good thing to be placed in order . . ."
"Freedom in intellectual work is found to be the basis of internal discipline."
"To give a child liberty is not to abandon him to himself."
"The observation of the way in which the children pass from the first disordered movements to those which are spontaneous and ordered -- this is the book of the teacher; this is the book which must inspire her actions . . ."
"For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual's total development lags behind?"
"Deceit is a kind of garment that conceals the soul. It might even be compared to a whole wardrobe, so many are its guises."
"Today, however, those things which occupy us in the field of education are the interests of humanity at large and of civilization, and before such great forces we can recognize only one country-the entire world."
"It is in the encounter of the maternal guiding instincts with the sensitive periods of the newly born that conscious love develops between parent and child."
"Conventions which camouflage a man's true feelings are a spiritual lie which help him adapt himself to the organized deviations of society."
"In nature nothing creates itself and nothing destroys itself."
"The first thing required of a teacher is that he be rightly disposed for his task."
"No social problem is as universal as the oppression of the child ... No slave was ever so much the property of his master as the child is of his parent ... Never were the rights of man ever so disregarded as in the case of the child."
"The child's true constructive energy, a dynamic power, has remained unnoticed for thousands of years. Just as men have trodden the earth, and later tilled its surface, without thought for the immense wealth hidden in its depths, so the men of our day make progress after progress in civilized life, without noticing the treasures that lie hidden in the psychic world of infancy."
"The world of education is like an island where people cut off from the world are prepared for life by exclusion from it."
"No adult can bear a child’s burden or grow up in his stead."
"One who has drunk at the fountain of spiritual happiness says good-by of his own accord to the satisfactions that come from a higher professional status ... What is the greatest sign of success for a teacher thus transformed? It is to be able to say, "The children are now working as if I did not exist."
"A teacher, therefore, who would think that he could prepare himself for his mission through study alone would be mistaken. The first thing required of a teacher is that he be rightly disposed for his task."
"The objects in our system are instead a help to the child himself, he chooses what he wants for his own use, and works with it according to his own needs, tendencies and special interests. In this way, the objects become a means of growth."
"In the psychological realm of relationship between teacher and child, the teacher's part and its techniques are analogous to those of the valet; they are to serve, and to serve well: to serve the spirit."