The wrong things are predominantly stressed in the schools - things remote from the student's experience and need.

We have no firm hold on any knowledge or philosophy that can lift us out of our difficulties.

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.

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.

No matter how mistaken Communist ideas may be, the experience and knowledge gained by trying them out have given a tremendous impetus to thought and imagination.

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

Language grows out of life, out of its needs and experiences...Language and knowledge are indissolubly connected; they are interdependent. Good work in language presupposes and depends on a real knowledge of things.