No one can be free unless he is independent.

... the first thing his education demands is the provision of an environment in which he can develop the powers given him by nature. This does not mean just to amuse him and let him do what he likes. But it does mean that we have to adjust our minds to doing a work of collaboration with nature, to being obedient to one of her laws, the law which decrees that development comes from environmental experience.

The task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility and evil with activity.

Two things are necessary, the development of individuality and the participation of the individual in a truly social life.

The first idea that the child must acquire, in order to be actively disciplined, is that of the difference between good and evil.

The essence of independence is to be able to do something for one’s self. Adults work to finish a task, but the child works in order to grow, and is working to create the adult, the person that is to be. Such experience is not just play... it is work he must do in order to grow up.

The teacher, when she begins work in our schools, must have a kind of faith that the child will reveal himself through work.