An educational method that shall have liberty as its basis must intervene to help the child to a conquest of liberty. That is to say, his training must be such as shall help him to diminish as much as possible the social bonds which limit his activity.

Great tact and delicacy is necessary for the care of the mind of a child from three to six years, and an adult can have very little of it.

Play is the work of the child.

To give a child liberty is not to abandon him to himself.

The greatest sign of success for a teacher...is to be able to say, "The children are now working as if I did not exist."

Sometimes very small children in a proper environment develop a skill and exactness in their work that can only surprise us.

Scientific observation then has established that education is not what the teacher gives; education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words but by experiences upon the environment.