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.

By the age of three, the child has already laid down the foundations of his personality as a human being, and only then does he need the help of special scholastic influences. So great are the conquests he has made that one may well say: the child who goes to school at three is already a little man.

The child is an enigma… He has the highest potentialities, but we do not know what he will be.

To stimulate life, leaving it then free to develop, to unfold, herein lies the first task of the teacher.

The ancient saying, "There is nothing in the intellect which was not first in some way in the senses," and senses being explorers of the world, opens the way to knowledge.

The principal agent is the object itself and not the instruction given by the teacher. It is the child who uses the objects; it is the child who is active, and not the teacher.

The goal of early childhood education should be to activate the child's own natural desire to learn.