I would urge that the yeast of education is the idea of excellence, and the idea of excellence comprises as many forms as there are individuals, each of whom develops his own image of excellence. The school must have as one of its principal functions the nurturing of images of excellence.

The fish will be the last to discover water.

Knowledge is justified belief.

The main characteristic of play - whether of child or adult - is not it content but its mode. Play is an approach to action, not a form of activity.

Agency presupposes choice.

There is, perhaps, one universal truth about all forms of human cognition: the ability to deal with knowledge is hugely exceeded by the potential knowledge contained in man's environment. To cope with this diversity, man's perception, his memory, and his thought processes early become governed by strategies for protecting his limited capacities from the confusion of overloading. We tend to perceive things schematically, for example, rather than in detail, or we represent a class of diverse things by some sort of averaged "typical instance.

We need to conceive of ourselves as "agents" impelled by self-generated intentions.