A child is mysterious and powerful; And contains within himself the secret of human nature.

My vision of the future is no longer of people taking exams and proceeding from secondary school to University but of passing from one stage of independence to a higher, by means of their own activity and effort of will.

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 task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility, and evil with activity, as often happens in old-time discipline . . . A room in which all the children move about usefully, intelligently, and voluntarily, without committing any rough or rude act, would seem to me a classroom very well disciplined indeed.

Mental development must be connected with movement and be dependent on it. It is vital that educational theory and practice should be informed by that idea.

The world of education is like an island where people cut off from the world are prepared for life by exclusion from it.

The child’s parents are not his makers but his guardians.