The child is truly a miraculous being, and this should be felt deeply by the educator.

The prize and punishments are incentives toward unnatural or forced effort, and, therefore we certainly cannot speak of the natural development of the child in connection with them.

The great constructive energies of the child ... have hitherto been concealed beneath an accumulation of ideas concerning motherhood. We used to say it was the mother who formed the child; for it is she who teaches him to walk, talk, and so on. But none of this is really done by the mother. It is an achievement of the child. What the mother brings forth is the baby, but it is the baby who produces the man. Should the mother die, the baby still grows up and completes his work of making the man.

A child's character develops in accordance with the obstacles he has encountered... or the freedom favoring his development that he has enjoyed.

Only when the child is able to identify its own center with the center of the universe does education really begin.

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

To teach details is to bring confusion; to establish the relationship between things is to bring knowledge.