The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done.

It was while teaching philosophy that I saw how easily one can say ... what one wants to say. ... In fact, I became particularly aware if the dangers of speculation ... It's so much easier than digging out the facts. You sit in your office and build a system. But with my training in biology, I felt this kind of undertaking precarious.

Scientific thought, then, is not momentary; it is not a static instance; it is a process.

Our problem, from the point of view of psychology and from the point of view of genetic epistemology, is to explain how the transition is made from a lower level of knowledge to a level that is judged to be higher.

True interest appears when the self identifies itself with ideas or objects, when it finds in them a means of expression and they become a necessary form of fuel for its activity.

To express the same idea in still another way, I think that human knowledge is essentially active.

To understand is to invent.