Learning to speak, therefore, and the power it brings of intelligent converse with others, is a most impressive further step along the path of independence ... Learning to walk is especially significant, not only because it is supremely complex, but because it is done in the first year of life.

The child can only develop fully by means of experience in his environment. We call such experience 'work'.

Peace is what every human being is craving for, and it can be brought about by humanity through the child.

It follows that at the beginning of his life the individual can accomplish wonders without effort and quite unconsciously.

We cannot know the consequences of suppressing a child's spontaneity when he is just beginning to be active. We may even suffocate life itself. That humanity which is revealed in all its intellectual splendor during the sweet and tender age of childhood should be respected with a kind of religious veneration. It is like the sun which appears at dawn or a flower just beginning to bloom. Education cannot be effective unless it helps a child to open up himself to life.

The first essential for the child’s development is concentration. The child who concentrates is immensely happy.

The social rights of children must be recognized so that a world suited to their needs may be constructed for them. The greatest crime that society commits is that of wasting the money which it should use for children on things that will destroy them and society itself as well.