Science is a systematic means of gaining reliable knowledge.

A society with too few independent thinkers is vulnerable to control by disturbed and opportunistic leaders. A society which wants to create and maintain a free and democratic social system must create responsible independence of thought among its young.

Those engaged in directing the actions of others are always in danger of overlooking the importance of the sequential development of those they direct.

A child may have to be snatched with roughness away from a fire so that he shall not be burnt.

All learning begins when our comfortable ideas turn out to be inadequate.

Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.

When words do not enter as factors into a shared situation, either overtly or imaginatively, they operate as pure physical stimuli, not as having a meaning or intellectual value. They set activity running in a given groove, but there is no accompanying conscious purpose or meaning.