...we discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being. It is not acquired by listening to words, but in virtue of experiences in which the child acts on his environment. The teacher's task is not to talk, but to prepare and arrange a series of motives for cultural activity in a special environment made for the child.

The laws governing the universe can be made interesting and wonderful to the child, more interesting even that things in themselves, and he begins to ask: What am I? What is the task of man in this wonderful universe? Do we merely live here for ourselves, or is there something more for us to do? Why do we struggle and fight? What is good and evil? Where will it all end?

We are the sowers - our children are those who reap. We labor so that future generations will be better and nobler than we are.

The child can only develop fully by means of experience in his environment. We call such experience 'work'.

Knowing what we must do is neither fundamental nor difficult, but to comprehend which presumptions and vain prejudices we must rid ourselves of in order to be able to educate our children is most difficult.

The child seeks for independence by means of work; an independence of body and mind.

Order is not goodness; but perhaps it is the indispensable road to arrive at it.