It's a great mistake, I think, to put children off with falsehoods and nonsense, when their growing powers of observation and discrimination excite in them a desire to know about things.

We imagine that we want to escape our selfish and commonplace existence, but we cling desperately to our chains.

Obedience is the gateway through which knowledge, yes, and love, too, enter the mind of the child.

I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think.

I never taught language for the purpose of teaching it; but invariably used language as a medium for the communication of thought; thus the learning of language was coincident with the acquisition of knowledge.

I cannot explain it; but when difficulties arise, I am not perplexed or doubtful. I know how to meet them.

People seldom see the halting and painful steps by which the most insignificant success is achieved.