Discipline must come through liberty. . . . We do not consider an individual disciplined only when he has been rendered as artificially silent as a mute and as immovable as a paralytic. He is an individual annihilated, not disciplined.

Do not erase the designs the child makes in the soft wax of his inner life.

Adults have not understood children or adolescents and they are, as a consequence, in continual conflict with them.

Any child who is self-sufficient, who can tie his shoes, dress or undress himself, reflects in his joy and sense of achievement the image of human dignity which is derived from a sense of independence.

When children come into contact with nature, they reveal their strength.

The child will reveal himself through work.

We cannot create observers by saying 'observe,' but by giving them the power and the means for this observation and these means are procured through education of the senses.