Only through freedom and environmental experience is it practically possible for human development to occur.

One of the great problems facing men is their failure to realize the fact that a child possesses an active psychic life even when he cannot manifest it, and that the child must secretly perfect this inner life over a long period of time.

The ‘absorbent mind’ welcomes everything, puts its hope in everything, accepts poverty equally with wealth, adopts any religion and the prejudices and habits of its countrymen, incarnating all in itself. This is the child!

A child needs freedom within limits.

Imitation is the first instinct of the awakening mind.

Knowing what we must do is neither fundamental nor difficult, but to comprehend which presumptions and vain prejudices we must rid ourselves of in order to be able to educate our children is most difficult.

It is not enough for the teacher to love the child. She must first love and understand the universe. She must prepare herself, and truly work at it.