If the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less showily. Let him go and come freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself.

We are afraid of ideas, of experimenting, of change. We shrink from thinking a problem through to a logical conclusion.

The processes of teaching the child that everything cannot be as he wills it are apt to be painful both to him and to his teacher.

I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better , if less "showily." Let him come and go freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself... Teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experiences.

I think that there are some teachers that do a very good job of incorporating culture and history. And there are some teachers who could use a little more help in that area.

It is a rare privilege to watch the birth, growth, and first feeble struggles of a living mind; this privilege is mine.

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.