Pedagogy must be oriented not to the yesterday, but to the tomorrow of the child's development. Only then can it call to life in the process of education those processes of development which now lie in the zone of proximal development

Experience teaches us that thought does not express itself in words, but rather realizes itself in them

What children can do with the assistance of others might be in some sense even more indicative of their mental development than what they can do alone

Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals.

... People with great passions, people who accomplish great deeds, people who possess strong feelings, even people with great minds and a strong personality, rarely come out of good little boys and girls.

A word devoid of thought is a dead thing, and a thought unembodied in words remains a shadow.

Language is the tool of the tools