A teacher, therefore, who would think that he could prepare himself for his mission through study alone would be mistaken. The first thing required of a teacher is that he be rightly disposed for his task.

Conventions which camouflage a man's true feelings are a spiritual lie which help him adapt himself to the organized deviations of society.

Love and the hope of it are not things one can learn; they are a part of life's heritage.

When mental development is under discussion, there are many who say, 'How does movement come into it? We are talking about the mind.' And when we think of intellectual activity, we always imagine people sitting still, motionless. But mental development must be connected with movement and be dependent on it. It is vital that educational theory and practice should be informed by that idea.

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.

A child is a discoverer. He is an amorphous, splendid being in search of his own proper form.

Supposing I said there was a planet without schools or teachers, where study was unknown, and yet the inhabitants -- doing nothing but live and walk about -- came to know all things, to carry in their minds the whole of learning; would you not think I was romancing? Well, just this, which seems so fanciful as to be nothing but the invention of a fertile imagination, is a reality. It is the child's way of learning.