A good aim surveys the present state of experience of pupils, and forming a tentative plan of treatment, keeps the plan constantly in view and yet modifies it as conditions develop. The aim, in short, is experimental, and hence constantly growing as it is tested in action.

Selection aims not only at simplifying but at weeding out what is undesirable.

Just as the senses require sensible objects to stimulate them, so our powers of observation, recollection, and imagination do not work spontaneously, but are set in motion by the demands set up by current social occupations.

While every social arrangement is educative in effect, the educative effect first becomes an important part of the purpose of the association in connection with the association of the older with the younger.

Thought is impossible without words.

Like the soil, mind is fertilized while it lies fallow, until a new burst of bloom ensues.

The phrase "think for one's self" is a pleonasm. Unless one does it for one's self, it isn't thinking.